Arthur Goes Fifth VII: Invasion of the Cat Women
by Dead Composer
Summary: The Yordilian Invasion, part 2. When Sue Ellen's people launch an attack on Earth, Arthur and his friends must turn to a mysterious Time Lord for help. Crossover with Doctor Who.
1. Doctor Who?

Disclaimer: I don't own Arthur or Doctor Who.

"It's that kind of thinking that's gonna get this planet conquered!" - Buster Baxter

_

* * *

_

_Several weeks ago…_

On a blue leather recliner inside a spacious, dome-shaped chamber relaxed a man with brown hair and muttonchops, wearing a brown jacket and tie. His legs were crossed casually, and he grasped in his hands a copy of _Gravity's Rainbow_ by Thomas Pynchon. As he read, he thought, _If only he knew the whole truth about the Phoebus cartel. It went far beyond light bulbs…so far beyond…_

He abruptly dropped the book. A sensation not unlike suffocating inside a coffin had flooded his mind. Surrounded by air, he choked and struggled for breath. He recognized the feeling—he had experienced it only once before, when his entire race had been annihilated in the blink of an eye. _It's happening again_, he realized. _Somewhere in the universe, millions of intelligences advanced enough for time travel are being destroyed all at once._

_This requires my immediate attention_. Leaping up from the recliner, he hurried to the hexagonal console mounted on the floor in the chamber's center. His eyes ran over the output screens, checking for unusual radiation signatures or time-space disruptions. _Nothing out of the ordinary here—it must be coming from over fifty thousand light-years away. Beyond that range, I know of only one time-capable race, the Kron. I've never met them, and I don't know much about them, but I'm sure of one thing—anyone capable of wiping them out in a heartbeat must be dangerously powerful…_

After a quick search through his stellar database, he manipulated the controls to set a course for the Kron homeworld. A slight lurch and a few seconds of nausea-inducing vibrations later, a green light flashed on the console, indicating that the destination had been reached. He flipped a switch to activate a viewscreen, and beheld the lush, green planetscape below. _No signs of hostile action_, he observed. _The ecosystem, the cities, the buildings, they're all intact. It's as if everyone's been beamed away…except for one person. Wait…is that another life sign? No, it can't be…_

The presence was unlike anything he had ever sensed, and it was on the ship with him. To his surprise, its appearance was almost comical. Its shape resembled that of a human female, but with the face and ears of a rabbit. It (she) wore a long dress of pure blackness, and her hair and eyes were a similar shade. Once she had glanced around curiously at the interior of the vessel, she gazed directly at him with palpable menace.

"Interesting," she spoke in a disarmingly sweet voice. "It's bigger on the inside than on the outside. What do you call this machine?"

He stammered in spite of himself. "I…I call it the TARDIS," he said in a refined Manchester accent. "That stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space."

"Knowing what it stands for doesn't help," said the rabbit woman matter-of-factly. "And who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," replied the man in the brown jacket. "And you?"

The visitor took mincing steps toward him. "I haven't chosen a name for myself yet," she stated. "I suppose the name Dark Augusta is as appropriate as any."

The Doctor hesitated anxiously before asking his next question. "Are you responsible for the removal of the people on…"

Dark Augusta flicked her hand at him. Before he had a chance to recognize it and resist, his thought processes had been rerouted to serve a new master.

"Grobblitz will try to go back in time and prevent my existence," she said. "Your machine is capable of traveling to any point in time. I command you to take me to the beginning of the universe, where Kron time travel technology can't reach me."

"I obey," said the Doctor placidly.

* * *

_The present day_

Principal Herbert Haney lay on his back on a field in Minnesota, blood oozing from the bullet wounds in his chest.

* * *

To be continued  



	2. Into the Woods

Sue Ellen let out a cry of abject horror: "_You killed Mr. Haney!_" The strong grip of the Yordilian cat women on her arms was beginning to make her hands feel numb. 

The smoking pistol still in her hand, Prunella stood rigidly, her face displaying no emotion. Haney showed no sign of life except for a faint wheezing sound.

Then, to Sue Ellen's surprise, the smirk on Gadfly's face gave way to gaping shock. "Herbert! _No!_" cried the Yordilian leader, putting her knuckles over her mouth. As she knelt before the bloodied principal, the last echoes of the three gunshots faded into the Minnesota wilderness.

Prunella broke her silence, but not her stiff posture. "Is there a problem, Gadfly?"

"Yes!" exclaimed the cat woman, who was pressing her hands to Haney's chest in a futile attempt to slow the bleeding. "You didn't have to shoot him!"

"I didn't have to _not_ shoot him," said Prunella.

Everything about the way she spoke—the tone, the inflections—seemed wrong to Sue Ellen. "You're not Prunella!" shouted the cat girl. "Who _are_ you?"

The rat girl's pointed nose swiveled toward her. "We've met before," she stated coldly.

"He's dying!" pleaded Gadfly. "Please, you must help him!"

"If you insist," said Prunella, lowering the pistol. "But if his life means so much to you, why didn't you tell me so?"

"I was putting on a tough façade," Gadfly replied tearfully. "I was about to throw my arms around him when you fired."

There was a whining sound, and waves of air flowed over Mr. Haney's prostrate body. He flickered and vanished like a light turning off. "Your principal will recover," Prunella told Sue Ellen. "Our medical technology is thousands of years beyond that of Earth."

_Thousands of years… _ Sue Ellen instantly recalled where she had heard the words.

"It's _you!_" she said, unable to point due to the Yordilians restraining her. "Lieutenant Tip…Tilp…Tipple…the fishbowl alien! How'd you get inside Prunella?"

"That's T'l'p'g'r," said the rat girl. "And I'm not _inside_ Prunella. The microchip we implanted in her brain to repair her short-term memory is good for much more than that. Not only can I see and hear everything she does, but I can control her actions. She didn't shoot Mr. Haney of her own free will."

"Let her go!" Sue Ellen snapped.

"I will," said Prunella, "once you've been safely reunited with your parents."

"Take her to the portal," said Gadfly, making a head gesture to the other cat women.

They carried Sue Ellen away, leaving Prunella standing alone in the woods with her father's gun. "You're hurting me," the cat girl complained. "I'm gonna tell my parents that you shot Mr. Haney, and then you'll be in big trouble."

"Your parents are fully aware of the situation," Gadfly assured her, "and so is April."

Sue Ellen pumped her legs to keep up with her captors' stride. "So April _is_ with my parents," she said proudly. "I _knew_ it."

"Don't be alarmed when you see them in prison uniforms," said Gadfly. "That's just for show. They're now the official liaisons between Yordil and the Alliance."

"You mean…your planet's _joining_ the Alliance?"

"I wouldn't say _joining_. Think of it more as a secret deal. The Alliance gets the peace of mind of knowing that Earth will never give rise to another Dark Augusta. In exchange, the Yordilians get to invade and conquer a planet full of men."

Sue Ellen gasped. "No! My parents would _never_ allow that!"

"Of course they would," said Gadfly. "After all, it was _their_ idea."

* * *

To be continued 


	3. The Doctor Makes a House Call

Elwood City had become a hive of curiosity. The artichoke-like head of Ablikablukapelifrotz a.k.a. Jenny, a girl from the planet Kressida, prompted phone calls and visits by neighbors, followed by reporters and camera crews. The street in front of George's house was packed with news vans to the point of being impassable. Inside the simple domicile, the famous Wolf Blitzen was conducting an interview with Jenny as cameras flashed on every side. George and his sister, Sal, watched the action from the couch, too excited to play or do homework. 

"You say you studied Earth culture and history for a long time before coming here," said Wolf, holding a microphone up to Jenny's lipless mouth.

"Yes, that's right," said the alien girl in her triplicate voice. "Each Alliance planet has a function to perform. There's Amishaak, the furniture planet; Bortzi, the poetry planet; the Kron, who regulate time travel; and my people, the Kressidans, who specialize in languages and cultures. We developed Mipata, the universal language of the Alliance. When I started college, I had to choose one of 276 less-developed worlds to study, and I picked Earth."

"Any particular reason?" Wolf asked her.

"Yes," replied Jenny. "The Sahara Desert. It's breathtaking."

One reporter was conspicuously absent from the gathering—Bitzi Baxter-Mills of the Elwood Times. The rabbit woman with horn-rimmed glasses was, at that moment, stuffing her essential belongings into a suitcase; these included a few carefully selected dresses, old family photos, all of Buster's postcards, and her Mary Kay cosmetics. In the crib to her left, the tiny infant Petula Winslow slept peacefully, oblivious to the sinister designs on her life of the Yordilian assassins who had poisoned her mother.

In the condo's living room, Buster's young friends were bidding farewell to him. "You should try hiding out in Amish country," the Brain advised him. "That's what Harrison Ford did in the movie _Witness_."

"That'd be cool," Buster mused. "Maybe I'd get to see Daniel again. But I don't know…I'd have to give up TV, the Internet, video games…"

"Yeah," said Alan, "but you'll be so busy eating shoo-fly pie, you won't care."

He took his leave, and Buster was left alone with another classmate, Beatrice "Beat" Simon. "I'll miss you terribly, Buster," said the half-rabbit, half-aardvark girl, who sat on the couch next to him with moist brown eyes.

"I'll miss you too, Beat," said Buster.

"Before you go," said his friend, "there's something I'm dying to do. Since I won't see you again, I don't think my mum and dad will have a problem with it."

"What is it?" the rabbit boy asked her.

Beat smiled tenderly. Her hand crept toward his, and he felt the warmth of her fingers.

Startled, Buster leaned away. "You're…you're not gonna _kiss_ me, are you?"

"That's _exactly_ what I'm going to do, you silly goose," said Beat.

Alarm filled Buster's heart as he looked at the wistful ten-year-old and the pair of lumps under her red dress. "Uh, I don't think we should do this," he said nervously.

"What's the matter?" said Beat. "Are you afraid of girls?"

"Er, yes," Buster admitted.

"You can pretend I'm a boy," said Beat, aiming her face at his lips. "I don't mind."

As she was about to make contact with the reluctant boy, his mother stepped into the room, followed by his stepfather, Harry Mills. "We're leaving _now_, Buster," said Bitzi, who cradled Petula in one arm and lugged a suitcase with the other.

Beat became crestfallen. "Oh, dear," she moaned. "I guess this is the end, innit?"

"I gotta go now," said Buster as he stood. "You can give me a goodbye kiss when I come back."

"If you like, we can drop you off at your building," said Bitzi to the British girl.

As Beat opened her mouth to answer, an odd noise filled the room. At first she thought a truck was passing by, but when the sound repeated itself, she was reminded of being five years old and mischievously pushing pretzel sticks through an electric fan. As everyone but Petula watched in amazement, a large object materialized in the room before them. Squeaks and whistles were heard as it became solid. The blue booth reached almost to the ceiling, and above the wooden doors were inscribed the words, POLICE CALL BOX.

"My God," said Harry reverentially. "What is it? Where did it come from?"

"It's…an old police box," Beat marveled, "like the ones we used to have in England."

Bitzi, expecting the worst, gripped Petula tightly to her bosom. One of the booth's doors flew open, and a stranger stuck out his head. "Hello," the man with muttonchops said pleasantly.

"Whoa," said Buster. "He's…he's a…"

"He's a non-anthro," Bitzi finished for him.

The grinning man emerged from the booth, revealing his brown jacket and tie. "Your flat's being watched," he said seriously. "You'll never reach safety by driving. I suggest you come with me."

"Who are you?" Harry demanded.

"I'm the Doctor," said the man, putting out his hand. "I'm a friend. I'm almost as interested in saving your lives as you are."

Beat's mouth fell open. _The Doctor…the police box…I thought it was all an urban myth!_

Harry hesitantly reached out to shake the visitor's hand, but the Doctor had turned his attention to Petula. "So this is the miracle baby," he gushed, tickling the infant's chin. "Isn't she a sweetie?"

"Excuse me for being suspicious," said Bitzi, "but it's been less than an hour since a woman with a gun came in here and threatened to kill her."

"Ah, yes," said the Doctor with a flippant air. "I know all about that. The Yordilians, Dark Augusta…I even met Dark Augusta once. Nice lady, very persuasive." He gazed admiringly at Buster. "You're the boy that helped destroy her, aren't you?"

"Yes, he is," Beat answered for the speechless rabbit boy. "And I'm his…stepsister, Beatrice. You can call me Beat."

The Doctor looked back and forth between Buster and the rabbit-aardvark girl. "You have each other's ears, I'll admit," he remarked. "But judging from her accent, Beatrice here was raised in the west end of London, not far north of the Thames."

"Yes, I was," said Beat with a nod. "You see, my dad travels a lot, and…"

"Er, she's not really our…" Harry interrupted.

"I love you, Dad," said Beat, putting her arms around the rabbit man's leg. "Go with the man," she whispered urgently.

"I'm sorry," said Harry to the Doctor, "but we don't accept rides from strangers, even British ones."

"Let's go, Buster," said Bitzi. She glanced around the condo. "Buster?"

Inside the dome-shaped chamber, Buster gaped in awe at the curved buttresses and the roundels adorning the walls. "Awesome," he said. "This place is _huge._"

* * *

To be continued 


	4. Welcome to Torchwood

Unable to find Buster anywhere else, Bitzi poked her head through the doorway of the strange blue booth. What she saw amazed her to the point that she almost dropped her baby. "Harry, get over here!" she called out. 

Her husband rushed to the spot, Beat following closely. They could see Buster poring over the controls on the centrally located console, where a transparent, glowing column shifted up and down. What they couldn't see was how such a chamber could exist inside an object the size of an outhouse.

"It's fantastic," Harry marveled. "I'm having a closer look."

They all walked into the booth as the Doctor stood to one side, smiling with satisfaction. No one was more impressed with the interior than Beat, who said while craning her neck, "It really _is_ bigger on the inside."

"Be careful, kids," Bitzi warned Buster and Beat. "Don't push any buttons or flip any levers or say anything that might be construed as a voice command."

"Methinks the lady doth worry too much," said the Doctor, who had strolled in after them. "The TARDIS controls are perfectly kid-proof."

"The _what?_" said Harry.

"Time and Relative Dimensions in Space," said the friendly-looking man. "TARDIS. It can take me to any point in space and time."

Buster gestured at the console. "What does that big red button do?" he asked.

"Push it and find out, Peter Cottontail," responded the Doctor.

Tempted beyond his ability to resist, he punched the button. The booth doors closed by themselves, and the glassy column in the middle of the console began to pump more vigorously. A feeling of weightlessness entered the stomachs of everyone inside.

"What's happening?" said Bitzi, wrapping both arms around Petula. "Let us out!"

"Sorry," said the Doctor with a grin. "No can do."

"We're traveling," said Beat with delight. "Are we going into the past or the future?"

"The future," replied the Doctor, his eyes ominously wide. "When we materialize in London, thirty whole seconds will have passed."

"London!" exclaimed Beat, clapping her hands. "I grew up there, I did!"

The blue box faded into existence in a dimly lit room with windowless stone walls. The doors immediately opened inward, and the Doctor led his passengers back to the outside world. "Where on Earth are we?" said Harry, looking around at the uninviting scene. "We _are_ still on Earth, right?"

"This is London like you've never seen it before," said the Doctor, waving his arms dramatically. "From an underground bunker."

The flickering overhead lights revealed several closed doors, one of them apparently made of steel. Only a few stacked cardboard boxes adorned the walls. "This place scares me," said Buster. "It's like being dead and having nothing to eat."

"_You're_ scared?" said the Doctor incredulously. "_I'm_ surrounded by giant talking rabbits."

The steel door slid open vertically. Where Buster expected to see a ravenous dragon, stood a middle-aged woman in a knee-length skirt. Her hair was a waterfall of blond curls, and she wore a carnation boutonniere on her right lapel. At the sight of the Doctor and his companions, her serious expression turned into a disarming smile.

"Greetings," she said with a sweet British accent. "Welcome to Torchwood."

* * *

To be continued 


	5. Paroxetene Yum

The non-anthropomorphic woman walked closer on her red pumps. "My name's Desirée," she told Buster's family and Beat. "Your baby will be safe here. I've arranged a very nice suite for you." 

"A suite?" said Bitzi in disbelief. "What is this, a hotel?"

"Oh, no," Desirée replied. "Torchwood is a scientific agency established by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Its purpose is to study extraterrestrials and their technology, and to apply the knowledge so gained in the defense of planet Earth."

"_And_ in the pursuit of innovative methods for the eradication of dandelions," added the Doctor.

"Cool," said Buster. "Can I look around? I want to see _everything_. The crashed spaceships, the laser guns, the cyborg cows…"

"You have school tomorrow, young man," Harry reminded him.

"Follow me," said Desirée, turning towards the brightly lit corridor on the other side of the doorway. "Once you've experienced the grand tour, I'm sure you'll understand and appreciate who we are, and what we can do for Petula."

Bitzi went after her, with her family and Beat trailing behind. "How do you know so much about us?" she asked the woman.

"When four thousand aliens land in Minnesota for no other reason but to kill a baby," answered Desirée, "we at Torchwood stand up and take notice."

"She's not just _any_ baby," said Buster. "She has magical powers."

"So I've heard," said Desirée as she led the guests into an elevator. "I'm told that every woman who holds her becomes instantly attached to her."

"Who _wouldn't?_" said Bitzi with a wistful smile.

The Doctor stopped outside the lift doors, inserting his foot to prevent them from closing. "My job's done," he stated. "I leave you in Desirée's more-than-capable hands."

"Where are you going?" Beat asked him.

"Back to the TARDIS," the Doctor replied. "Once I'm certain the Yordilian threat has been neutralized, I'll check up on you. Tally-ho."

He bounded away, and the elevator doors shut him off from view. "For a doctor, he's not scary at all," Buster remarked.

The lift began to move, one level after another flashing by. "He makes it sound like he's going to stop the invasion single-handedly," said Harry.

"He's the Doctor," Desirée said simply.

"Just who _is_ the Doctor?" asked Beat. "I've heard all sorts of legends."

"Buster," said Desirée, addressing the rabbit boy, "I've been told you have an alien friend, Grobblitz, who goes by the name Portinari when he's on Earth. I've also been told that the rest of his people, the Kron, were wiped out by Dark Augusta."

"Yeah, they were," said Buster.

"The Doctor's situation is very similar," the blond woman continued. "He's the last of a race of Time Lords who inhabited the planet Gallifrey. Just like the Kron, his people mastered the science of time travel, and took upon themselves the burden of regulating it throughout the galaxy. Time travel can be very destructive if used irresponsibly, you know."

"It sure came in handy when we were fighting Dark Augusta," Buster recalled.

The elevator opened, revealing the glass doors of a carpeted reception area. A large sign with the word TORCHWOOD in blocky letters was fastened to the wall. "The tour begins here," Desirée announced.

"Before we start, I have a question," said Bitzi. "How long do you expect us to stay here?"

Desirée looked at her grimly. "How long do you want Petula to live?" was her reply.

_

* * *

_

_Buster's gone_, thought Arthur dolefully. _He was my best friend, and now he's gone._

Mrs. Read caught sight of his glum expression as he trudged into the house. "What's the matter, dear?" she asked.

Arthur sighed and threw up his hands. "This neighborhood's going bonkers," he complained. "Van turned into a girl, Muffy moved to another planet, there's an alien living in George's house, and now Buster's…"

"I wanna see the alien!" cried D.W., her pink skirt bouncing as she hopped up and down.

"I just _came_ from seeing the alien," Arthur told her. "There's a line a mile long…no, there's a _crowd_ a mile long. It's like waiting to get in to see Kresblain, except you'll never get in."

"I don't care if I have to wait fifteen whole minutes!" said D.W. impatiently. "I wanna see the alien!"

"Arthur, why can't you take your sister to see the alien?" said Mrs. Read.

"Why can't _you?_" the aardvark boy retorted.

"Because my feet will get swollen if I stand up for a long time," said his pregnant mother.

"I know," said D.W. with a grin. "_Greta_ can take me to see the alien."

Arthur groaned. "Greta, Greta, always Greta. Your _living_ friends are starting to miss you."

D.W. looked aside at the unicorn girl. "He still thinks you're dead," she said mockingly.

"Can a dead girl do _this?_" said Greta, who suddenly launched a barrage of belly tickles.

D.W. squirmed and giggled. "Stop it, Greta! Stop it!"

"Okay," said Arthur to his mother. "I'll take D.W. to see the alien, _if_ she promises to not talk to Greta on the way."

"I promise! I promise!" shouted D.W. as her unicorn friend faded away.

They made it half of the way to George's house, and D.W. had kept her promise by saying absolutely nothing. In the distance they saw Tommy and Timmy Tibble hurtling down the sidewalk.

D.W. broke her silence. "Hi, Tommy. Hi Timmy."

"Why are you running around by yourselves?" asked Arthur. "Where's your mom?"

"She's seeing the rapist," replied Tommy breathlessly.

"You mean she's seeing a _therapist_," Timmy corrected him. "And when she comes back, she's gonna take us to the food coop."

"You mean the food _co-op_," said Tommy.

"Did you see the alien?" D.W. asked the twins.

"Yeah," said Timmy excitedly. "She's really huge and really ugly. She wears a house over her head so nobody can see her face, because if you look at her face, your brains go splody."

"She rips trees out of the ground and eats them," Tommy added, "but she prefers little girls."

"I don't believe a word you're saying," said D.W. arrogantly.

"Okay," said Tommy. "You'll find out the hard way, like Emily did."

The boys ran off in the direction of their apartment. "Let's go home," said D.W. to her brother. "If Tommy and Timmy say there's an alien, then there _is_ no alien."

By the time they opened the unlocked door into their home, the Tibbles had only one thought on their minds. "I'm hungry," moaned Timmy.

"I'm hungrier than you are," said Tommy.

"No, you're not," said Timmy. "C'mon, let's find something to eat."

Finding nothing but juice and vegetables in the refrigerator and canned soup in the pantry, the boys bravely climbed their way up to the cupboard. Tommy shuffled through the bottles and stacks of coupons until he happened upon a curious slip of paper.

"Look at this, Timmy," he said, looking at the crude handwriting. "It says, 'Paroxetene yum'."

"Hmm," said Tommy curiously. "What's Paroxetene?"

"I dunno," said Timmy, "but it must be yummy."

Tommy grabbed a small round object from the shelf. "This bottle has 'Paroxetene' written on it," he observed.

"And it has little pieces of blue candy inside," said Timmy. "Let's open it."

Tommy gripped the lid tightly and tried to twist it, but to no avail. "It's a child-proof cap," he said with a frustrated sigh.

"No problem," said Timmy. "Remember what Mom told us? Push, then turn."

They split the contents of the bottle between them, twelve capsules apiece. "These aren't yummy at all," said Tommy as he tossed another capsule into his mouth. "They taste kinda weird."

"Yeah," Timmy agreed, "but I'm _really_ hungry."

A cry of terror startled them. Trixie Tibble was standing in the kitchen, clad in her ermine coat, fear and outrage in her eyes. "What are you _doing?_" she bellowed.

"Uh-oh," said Tommy. "Now we're in trouble. We didn't leave any for Mom."

Mrs. Tibble snatched the bottle out of her son's hand. "Oh, my God," she said with alarm. "You ate _all_ of it!"

"The little piece of paper says, 'Paroxetene yum'," Timmy explained.

Trixie examined the slip on the counter. "No, it doesn't," she said scoldingly. "It says, 'Paroxetene, 40 m'. That stands for '40 milligrams'."

"What are milligrams?" asked Tommy, but his mother was too busy dialing 911 to answer.

* * *

To be continued 


	6. They Heard You

"And that's the news from Lake Wobegon," uttered the voice of Garrison Keillor over the radio, "where the men are from Mars, the women are from Venus, and the children haven't been told where they come from yet." 

Brandon turned the dial to a country music station with one hand, and gripped the sheepskin cover of his steering wheel with the other. His old Dodge Ram rolled quietly along the dirt road, a case of beer lying on the passenger seat and assorted rifles stowed in the cab. As he whistled along to the Keith Urban melody, a startling sight appeared before him. He stepped on the brake and swerved, nearly knocking over the dazed-looking girl with a pistol dangling from her fingers.

He jumped out of the vehicle, certain something was terribly wrong. The girl only stared at him with sorrowful eyes. "Are you lost?" he asked her. "Do you need help?"

"I…I…" stammered Prunella, and she began to cry bitterly.

"Please don't do that," said the man in the plaid shirt and orange hunting jacket. "You're breakin' my heart. Where do you live? I'll take you to your mom and dad."

"I…live in Elwood City," sobbed the rat girl.

"Pennsylvania?" said Brandon, astonished.

Prunella shook her head.

"Get in the truck," the man urged her. "I'll take you to the police station. It's not safe for a little girl, with all the aliens in the woods and whatnot."

"_Aliens!_" shrieked Prunella in terror.

"Yeah, they scare me too," said Brandon. "That's why I joined the militia. A few more days and we'll be strong enough to send the aliens back where they came from, or wipe 'em out. We sure as hell aren't gonna wait for the National Guard to act." He looked thoughtfully at the gun in Prunella's hand. "Where'd you get that? Did your daddy give it to you so you could protect yourself from the aliens?"

She cautiously lifted up the pistol by its handle. "Please take it away from me," she begged. "The aliens made me use it. They made me shoot the principal."

Having disarmed Prunella, the hunter assisted her into the truck and drove away. She sat silently, gazing through the window at the field where Mr. Haney had left his car.

"My name's Brandon," said the man. "What's yours?"

"P-Prunella," the girl replied.

"That's a pretty name," Brandon remarked. "Does everybody in Elwood City have a pointy nose like yours?"

"Some people do," said Prunella. "It's a very diverse town."

The truck turned onto the main road, leaving clouds of settling dust in its wake. "I just realized something," said the disconsolate rat girl.

"What's that?" asked Brandon.

"The aliens can hear everything I hear," she told him. "They put some kind of computer chip in my brain. That thing you said about sending them back where they came from? They heard you."

_

* * *

_

_Bionic Bunny is boring, and it's not a repeat_, thought Arthur. _So he's fighting an evil alien. Big whoop. I saw an evil alien last night!_ He turned his eyes aside to watch Pal, who was rolling on his back and apparently smiling with delight. _What's gotten into him?_ Arthur wondered.

"Oh, yes, yes!" the little dog gushed. "That's the sweet spot! Keep scratching it!"

"Your wish is my command," said Greta, eagerly rubbing Pal's belly.

The doorbell rang, and Mr. Read set aside his wedding cake frosting to answer it. "Is Arthur home?" asked Binky Barnes.

"He sure is," said the aardvark man. "Come on in."

Pal was still wriggling in the throes of ecstasy when the big bulldog kid walked up. "Reminds me of Buster when he's dreaming about food," Binky remarked.

"Oh, hi, Binky," said Arthur. "Have a seat. Bionic Bunny's on."

"Okay," said his friend, occupying the empty spot on the couch. "This is new. I haven't seen this episode."

"It's kinda lame," Arthur commented. "This alien lands on Earth and tries to steal all the bicycles."

"That _is_ lame," said Binky. "If I was an alien and I landed on Earth, I'd give everyone a good clobbering."

"I guess you missed the _Attack of the Clobbernauts_ episode," said Arthur.

They sat still and watched a few vibrantly colored scenes, and then a question occurred to the aardvark boy: _How does he know what Buster looks like when he's dreaming?_

"Hey, Arthur," said Binky, "you don't have a girlfriend right now, do you?"

"Uh, no, not really," said Arthur. _That's a funny thing to ask me._

"Buster and I had a thing going," Binky related.

_What kind of a thing…?_

"But now Buster's gone," he continued. "So I thought I'd ask you if…"

_Omigosh…_ Arthur fought to keep his teeth from chattering.

"…you'd like to be my new…"

Arthur started to squirm. _Could the rumors be true? Is Binky…gay?_

"…study buddy."

"Your _what_ buddy?" Arthur blurted out.

* * *

A character will DIE in the next chapter… 


	7. Time to Die

"Buster and I read this book about sex," Binky explained to Arthur. "We learned about the weird things that happen to girls when they get older. We were so freaked out, we decided to swear off girls and spend our time studying, like the guys in that Shakespeare play." 

"What Shakespeare play?" said Arthur.

"I dunno," said Binky, shrugging. "The one where everybody dies in the end. Fern knows, ask her."

"So _that's_ why you broke up with Molly," Arthur realized. "It's not because you're gay."

Binky's face turned red with anger. His eyes narrowed. "Call me gay again," he said, waving his fist, "and I'll wrap my fingers around the contents of your stomach."

Arthur shrank back. "I-I don't think you're gay," he said timidly. "But there _is_ someone who does."

"Who is he?" demanded Binky, his head appearing to grow even bigger. "I'll kill him!"

* * *

Sue Ellen recognized the Thrag operations center, with its arched ceiling and row after row of helmeted aliens hunched over consoles, the moment she was transported aboard. On a past occasion she and April had been mistakenly apprehended and imprisoned in this place, where they had discovered that their parents were not only still alive, but employed by the Yordilian government as secret agents. This time the welcoming committee seemed much friendlier. Her mother, her father, April, and four indistinguishable Thrags with laser pistols hanging from their belts stood before her.

Mrs. Armstrong smiled broadly and reached out with her hands. "My little girl," she gushed.

April's shrill voice shattered the quiet air. "They're planning to destroy Earth! Don't listen to their lies!"

"Quiet, April!" Mr. Armstrong barked. "We have _no_ intention of destroying Earth."

Sue Ellen carefully approached her parents, who received her with sweet smiles. "Is that true?" she inquired.

"Of course not, dear," her mother responded. "April's just being paranoid." Behind her hand she whispered, "It's the food here. It's making her constipated."

"You know I'm right," Sue Ellen's future-self-turned-adopted-sister warned her. "You saw what happened to Principal Haney. They're all in it together—Gadfly, Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r, and _our parents._"

The leftmost Thrag spoke, his crystalline helmet vibrating slightly. "I apologize for my carelessness. Mr. Haney is being treated in our infirmary. His condition is critical but stable, which in Earth terms means that he's going to make it."

"Is it true what Prunella said?" Sue Ellen pressed the alien. "Did you make her shoot Mr. Haney with your mind control whatsit?"

"Regrettably, yes," replied Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r.

"I thought you were a good guy," said the cat girl disappointedly. "You helped us rescue Buster after he was abducted."

"True," said the Thrag. "Since then, however, a shift in alliances has taken place."

Mr. Armstrong described the situation to his daughter as the group stood on a moving walkway, headed for the infirmary. "A consortium of Alliance leaders has wisely concluded that a necessary step to prevent the appearance of another Dark Augusta is to seize control of the planet Earth," he said. "An Alliance invasion of Earth is out of the question, of course—but as long as the Alliance refuses to interfere, there's nothing to stop the Yordilians from going in."

"But, Dad," said Sue Ellen earnestly, "all my friends live on Earth—Arthur, Francine, Buster, Muffy, George, Tenzin…"

"Let me tell you something, Sue Ellen," said Mr. Armstrong sternly. "Locked away in an underground refrigeration unit on Yordil is an engineered pathogen so deadly, an ounce of it could kill every last human on Earth."

Sue Ellen's jaw started to drop.

"But we're not going to use it, or anything like it," her father went on. "We're not monsters. Your friends will be fine."

"We've reached the infirmary," said T'l'p'g'r, gesturing with his long arm at an overhead sign with alien letters. "Once you see the care and effectiveness with which Mr. Haney is being treated, your opinion of us will improve."

A pair of large doors slid open, showing them a spacious room in which multi-legged creatures in white robes scuttled about. A strong chemical smell, not unlike that of an Earth rainstorm, surrounded them. T'l'p'g'r motioned for Sue Ellen to enter first—but as she put her foot forward, another Thrag rushed in from a side corridor.

"Lieutenant, I have news of an urgent nature," the helmeted officer reported.

"Speak," said T'l'p'g'r, putting a hand down to stop Sue Ellen.

"The Yordilian platoon on Earth is in danger," said the Thrag. "We've learned through the Earth girl Prunella that a paramilitary group is assembling with the intention of forcing the Yordilians to leave, or exterminating them."

Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong gasped with concern. "This is serious indeed," T'l'p'g'r remarked. "We'll deal with it. What of the baby, Petula Winslow?"

"There's been no sign of her," replied the officer. "She seems to have slipped past the Yordilian agents."

"Wait a minute," April chimed in. "Who's Petula Winslow?"

"She's Augusta's baby," Sue Ellen informed her.

"Augusta had a _baby?_" marveled April.

Mrs. Armstrong turned to face T'l'p'g'r's blank helmet. "She doesn't know," was all she said.

"_What_ don't I know?" April demanded.

The tall alien rested his hand on the curly-haired girl's shoulder. "Try to look at this from the proper perspective," he said gently. "When weighed against the destruction a new Dark Augusta could wreak, the lives of one woman and one infant amount to very little."

April began to fume as the meaning of T'l'p'g'r's words became clear to her. "You're trying to kill Augusta's baby," she said through clenched teeth. "I haven't even _seen_ her yet!"

"And you never will, I'm afraid," said the alien lieutenant. "It's for the best."

In spite of the anger tearing at her heart, April maintained a calm exterior. "Yes," she said meekly, "I suppose it is."

"Let's proceed, then," said T'l'p'g'r, dismissing the officer who had brought him news. "As you enter the infirmary, the head nurse will ask you to wash your…"

It happened quickly and unexpectedly. April grabbed Sue Ellen by the wrist and ran with all her might, dragging her younger self along behind. "Cowards! Baby killers!" she shrieked. The two girls fled down the side hallway and disappeared around a bend.

T'l'p'g'r and the Armstrongs stood still. "Let them run," said the Thrag. "They can't hurt themselves, and they can't leave."

They sped past one grated cell door after another as the curious eyes of prisoners watched. "Where are we going?" asked Sue Ellen.

"I'm gonna blow the place up," said April, her voice filled with rage. "They say there's no self-destruct device, but I don't believe them. There's _always_ a self-destruct device."

"But we'll die, too," Sue Ellen pointed out.

"I'm not afraid to die," said April.

"What about _me?_"

"I'm not afraid of you dying either."

As the cat girls rushed toward their fates, the TARDIS phased into real space a short distance away. Wary of who or what he would encounter, the Doctor looked this way and that as he stepped out. _The transmat beam I detected in Minnesota originated on this station,_ he reminded himself. _Whoever lives here is most likely in league with the Yordilian invaders. I don't think they'll be happy to see me…_

The hallway was cold and featureless, and the hum of a great machine could be heard. Pulling a screwdriver-sized device from inside his brown jacket, the Doctor meandered in the direction of the better-lit end of the corridor. To his surprise, a pair of girls with red hair and catlike ears came charging at him. He raised his device defensively, just as the girls froze in their tracks and gaped.

"Who are _you?_" asked April.

"Never mind who _I_ am," was the Doctor's response. "Who are you, why do you look so much alike, and what are you doing up so far past your bedtime?"

"Whoever you are," Sue Ellen pleaded, "can you take us away from here?"

"Why, of course," said the Doctor, pushing open the doors into the TARDIS. "I routinely give lifts to strange girls. Walk this way."

With sighs of elation, Sue Ellen and April followed the Doctor up to the blue booth's entrance. When April placed her hand on the door to brace herself, she suddenly cried out in pain and flew backwards, knocking Sue Ellen off her feet.

"Hello, what's this?" exclaimed the Doctor, turning around.

Sue Ellen jumped to her feet with catlike agility. April, however, quivered and moaned as she stood up. "Are you all right, April?" asked the younger girl.

That was the moment when she and the Doctor noticed that something was wrong—incredibly wrong—with April.

She had somehow grown several inches in height. Her green dress clung so tightly to her torso that it threatened to rip. The two swellings on her chest became bigger and rounder. She grew several _more_ inches in height. "I feel strange," she mumbled, her voice sounding more mature. "What's wrong with me?"

To the astonished eyes of Sue Ellen and the Doctor, April appeared not as a thirteen-year-old girl, but an attractive cat woman in her early twenties—a cat woman whose girlish clothes were bursting at the seams. The tips of her ears were almost even with the Doctor's nose.

"She's getting _older!_" cried Sue Ellen in terror.

In the time it took April to say, "Oh, crap," she had taken on the form of a thirty-something female with thinning curls.

"Don't touch her," the Doctor cautioned Sue Ellen. "She's in a state of rapid temporal advancement."

"Do something!" Sue Ellen pleaded. "Help her!"

"I _am_ doing something," said the Doctor, circling April with his hands outstretched. "I'm observing the situation."

_This is what I'm going to look like_, marveled Sue Ellen. Before her awestruck eyes, April morphed into a woman in her forties with deep lines in her face.

"Tell me, little girl," the Doctor inquired, "has your friend ever traveled backwards in time?" He received no answer, as Sue Ellen's gaze was hopelessly transfixed on her rapidly aging adopted sister.

Wrinkles and gray hairs popped up on April's head—she was entering her fifties. "I feel so tired," she complained, her voice growing deeper. "Can anyone tell me what's happening?"

"There's only one explanation," said the Doctor hastily. "She was subjected to some ill-planned time travel experiment, which left her improperly aligned with the time-space continuum. I've seen it before with people who attempted time travel through magical means. Contact with the dimensional field of the TARDIS can be lethal to someone in that condition."

"Help me," groaned April, now a stooped woman in her seventies with ragged white hair. Sue Ellen didn't move, blink, or close her gaping mouth. Her life was flashing by, and her mind found it harder and harder to bear.

Two Thrag patrolmen came marching down the corridor, laser weapons drawn. "We've got company," said the Doctor, keeping one eye on the armed officers and another on the hapless old cat woman.

April's knees buckled as age took its toll. Her face became dry and crinkled. Dark brown splotches infested her skin as it dangled from her bones. "Help me," she repeated, her voice faint and weak. She scratched at the ground with her yellowing nails until her strength failed.

"I'm so sorry," said the Doctor as the Thrags pointed their guns at his temples. "I'm so, so sorry."

Sue Ellen watched with saucer-wide eyes, unable to look away or even think of looking away. April was a bony wraith on the floor, her skin and lips the color of dust. She let out a pathetic gasp and became rigid.

* * *

To be continued 


	8. State of Shock

By the time Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong arrived at the TARDIS with Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r, the Doctor's arms had been shackled behind his back, and nothing was left of April but a bleached skeleton. Sue Ellen lay on her side, her mouth hanging open grotesquely, her eyes unfocused. 

While Mrs. Armstrong knelt and tended to her daughter, her husband confronted the brown-jacketed intruder. "You're from Earth, aren't you?" he said suspiciously.

"In a roundabout sort of way," was the Doctor's flippant reply.

"Whose bones are those?" asked Mr. Armstrong, pointing down.

"One that was a girl, sir," answered the Doctor, "but, rest her soul, she's dead."

"I could have you locked up," said the cat man sternly.

"Really?" said the Doctor with a wide grin. "Judging from _your_ attire, it would seem that prisoners enjoy a great deal of freedom on this station."

Sue Ellen only gazed blankly, in spite of her mother's caressing embrace. "She's in a state of shock," the cat woman reported.

Mr. Armstrong cautiously nudged the tailbone of the prostrate skeleton, only to watch it crumble into shards. "These bones must be hundreds of years old," he remarked. "How did they get here? It boggles the mind."

"I'd say a round of introductions is in order," the Doctor proposed. "I'll start. How do you do? I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?" said Mr. Armstrong.

"I was warned that a person called The Doctor might attempt to interfere in our affairs," said T'l'p'g'r in his deep bass voice.

"My good man," said the Doctor, "if you wish to have an affair, that's none of my concern whatsoever."

"Why are you here?" Mr. Armstrong demanded to know.

"Why are _you_ here?" the Doctor retorted. "Why are a Yordilian in a prison uniform and a Thrag soldier standing together as if they were lifelong chums?"

Mrs. Armstrong carefully laid down Sue Ellen's curly head, stood up, and peered through the open doorway of the TARDIS. "April?" she called out. "Are you in there?"

"She can't hear you," the Doctor informed her. "She's dead."

"_Dead?_" the cat woman blurted out.

"_Long_ dead," said the Doctor, gesturing toward the broken skeleton.

"You can't be serious," said Mr. Armstrong. "April's only a child."

"_Was_ only a child," said the Doctor. "Perhaps an analogy will help you to understand. You're taking a drive one evening, and you enter the highway on the wrong ramp, so that you're now traveling in the opposite direction of what you should. It's completely dark, and there's no one else on the road, so you have no way of knowing that something's amiss—that is, until you meet a car traveling in the _right_ direction, and by then it's too late. Now replace 'highway' with 'time stream' and 'car' with 'temporal distortion field', and you still won't have the foggiest idea of what happened to poor April."

"Are you finished?" T'l'p'g'r asked him.

"I haven't even begun," replied the Doctor.

The lieutenant motioned to his fellow Thrags. "Incarcerate the intruder," he ordered.

Two helmeted officers seized the Doctor's arms and dragged him away, kicking and wriggling. "You can't hold me here forever!" he bellowed. "The Canadian Mounties are searching for me at this very moment!"

Mr. Armstrong stroked his stubby chin as he watched them leave. "Daisy, take Sue Ellen to the infirmary," he instructed his wife. "Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r, round up a team of scientists to examine the blue booth. I'll keep looking for April."

* * *

Many light-years away at the emergency room of the Katzenellenbogan Memorial Hospital, Tommy and Timmy Tibble were placed on neighboring beds as their worried mother stood by. 

"Oooh," moaned Timmy, clutching his stomach. "I feel really, really sick."

"I feel sicker than you do," groaned Tommy.

"Whatever," said Timmy miserably.

"Make them better," their mother, Trixie Tibble, pleaded with the nurse. "I'll give you money."

"That _is_ how we do things here, ma'am," said the nurse, who happened to be a male anthropomorphic duck.

"What are you gonna do to us, Mr. Doctor?" Tommy asked the uniformed man.

"No, _I'm_ not the doctor," the nurse told him. "But the doctor's on her way, and she's going to use a machine to pump the bad stuff out of your stomachs."

"Pump their stomachs!" wailed Mrs. Tibble. "Oooh…I think I'm going to faint!"

The duck man turned and glared impatiently at her. "I suggest you have a seat, ma'am. And a lollipop. I'll unwrap it for you if you like."

* * *

Miles away at the other end of the pond, Buster and Beat were enjoying their stay at the Torchwood Institute by frolicking among the exhibits. "Area 51 has _nothing_ on this place," Buster exulted. Pointing at a tall, conical figure behind a glass barrier, he inquired, "What's that thing called?" 

"It's a Dalek," replied Desirée, their hostess. "It's not a _real_ Dalek, of course—it's just a mock-up. If you push the blue button, you'll see what a real Dalek would do to you if it caught you."

Buster and Beat raced each other to reach the button; Beat, having longer legs, made it there first. The bumpy metal creature began to wave its appendages about. "Resistance…is…useless," it screeched. "Your…planet…belongs…to…us…now. Obey…or…you…will…be…exterminated."

"Cool!" said Buster.

"Wicked cool!" said Beat.

"Do you have any real Daleks?" Buster asked the blond woman.

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information," was Desirée's response.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!" said the fake Dalek in its grating voice.

"Come on, Buster," said Beat, grabbing the rabbit boy's hand. "I'll wager they're hiding the real Daleks behind that door that reads _Authorized Personnel Only_."

As the children burst through the forbidden passageway, Bitzi walked up to Desirée with baby Petula cradled in her arms. "I'd better go after them," the rabbit woman suggested.

"Don't bother," Desirée reassured her. "The most dangerous thing in that room is the custodian." Indeed, only seconds passed before an angry-looking dog man appeared, dragging Beat and Buster along by their ears.

"I've seen the way you look at Petula," said Bitzi to Desirée. "Would you like to hold her for a minute?"

"I thought you'd never ask," said the Torchwood official.

Bitzi tenderly passed the infant into Desirée's hands. The woman gazed affectionately at the tiny rabbit baby, rocked her back and forth a bit, and returned her to her adoptive mother. "Thank you," she said.

"Did you feel anything?" Bitzi asked her.

"Only what _any_ woman would feel when looking into such beautiful eyes," Desirée answered. "Of course, as a Torchwood employee, I've been trained to resist psychic influences, so it's entirely possible that there _is_ something mystical about Petula."

Bitzi smiled wistfully. _You have no idea how it is to have a baby of your own_, she thought.

Desirée's expression turned serious. "There's something I must ask you, Bitzi," she said a bit hesitantly. "Would you object to allowing Torchwood's scientific staff to study your child?"

* * *

To be continued 


	9. What Are You Trying to Pull?

Taken aback, Bitzi narrowed her eyes at the woman. "Does Petula _look_ like a guinea pig to you?" she said harshly. 

_To be honest, yes_, Desirée was tempted to say. "Think about this carefully," she urged Bitzi. "For some reason the Yordilians have singled out _your_ baby, and if anyone can figure out what that reason is, it's our scientific staff."

Bitzi stroked Petula's cheek, and a thrill of joy passed through her heart. "She's not leaving my arms," the rabbit woman stated. "If you want to run tests on her, you'll have to wait until she can give _her_ consent."

Desirée nodded sheepishly. "If that's your decision, then I'll honor it," she said to Bitzi. To herself she said, _We'll have to come up with a way to examine the baby without her mother's knowledge. Microsensors concealed in her Huggies, maybe?_

* * *

The heated police station offered a respite from the November cold to Prunella, who had left her jacket in Mr. Haney's Chevy. There was one officer on duty, a clean-shaven, non-anthro male, seated by his desk in full uniform. The wall behind him was plastered with posters of wanted fugitives and several calendars with pictures of women in bikinis.

"What've we got here, Brandon?" asked the policeman.

"I found her wandering down the road," replied the hunter who had ushered the girl into the station. "I think she had a run-in with the aliens."

"That so," said the officer, leaning forward and giving Prunella a look that was more like a leer. "What'd they do to you, little girl? Did they probe you? They probed you, didn't they?"

"Uh…well…" the rat girl began.

"You don't have to describe it to me," said the uniformed man. "It's all over now. Soon your parents will come to get you, and those alien scumwads will get a view of our planet from six feet underground. Have a seat, little girl. Help yourself to some Hershey's Kisses."

Still somewhat anxious, Prunella tugged her skirt upwards and sat down. _At least he can defend himself if I try to kill him_, she thought.

"You'll be safe here," Brandon told her. Pulling a small white card from his shirt pocket, he handed it to the girl and added, "When you want your gun back, call me."

She scrutinized the card as the helpful man walked out of the police station. It read: BRANDON WAITE, AUTO BODY REPAIR, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. 682 MAIN ST., BRAINYNERD, MINNESOTA.

In another sector of space, Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r's gaze was fixed on a video screen that showed him everything Prunella's eyes saw. _682 Main Street, Brainynerd, Minnesota_, thought the alien officer. _That shouldn't be hard to find._

Prunella looked up, and noticed that the policeman was staring vapidly at her. "You sure don't look like a local," he remarked. "I'll bet you're from the same place as that long-eared kid, the one who came through and shot everyone with his video camera. So, you got a name?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but froze suddenly—the alien voice was speaking to her. _Omigosh, not again!_ she thought frantically. _I mustn't do what it says…I mustn't…I must…I must find out more about this militia of theirs…_

"Are you also a member of the militia?" asked Prunella in an unusually mature tone.

The policeman chuckled. "I'm not just a member of the militia," he told the girl. "I'm one of its _leaders_. But don't tell the aliens, okay?"

"I won't," Prunella assured him.

* * *

"Who thinks I'm gay?" said Binky, his glare threatening to burn a hole in Arthur's skull.

"Er, ah, there's more than one person who thinks you're gay," said the nervous aardvark boy.

"I want names, doofus!" Binky snarled.

_You can't handle the names_, thought Arthur. "Uh, let's see," he lied thoughtfully. "There's Bobby Bobbins, the kid with the leg braces."

"I don't know any kid with leg braces," said Binky.

"He just transferred to Lakewood," said Arthur. "And he's really shy."

"Who else?" Binky demanded.

Arthur's mind raced. "Jimmy Jenkins, the boy who lost his arms in a war," he went on. "Stevie Stark, the nearsighted kid with the funny glasses."

"Keep going," said Binky menacingly.

"Fred Finster," Arthur added, "the kid who…er, ah…"

"The kid who _what?_" said Binky, tightening his fists. "What's _his_ excuse for not getting clobbered by me?"

"His excuse is…that…he's…a…_girl_. Yeah. Her real name's Frida, but all her friends call her Fred. In fact, _all_ the other kids who think you're gay are girls."

Binky folded his arms. "That's just mean," he said indignantly. "They know I'm not gonna beat them up, so they make up stories about me behind my back."

_It worked_, thought Arthur with relief. _I wonder if I can convince him that Alzheimer's disease is contagious…no, I'd better not press my luck._

"So," said Binky, his scowl giving way to a smile, "do you want to be my new study buddy, or what?"

_Great_, thought Arthur. _Now what do I tell him?_

His hesitation prompted Binky to say, "You don't think I'm _gay_, do you?"

"Of course not," said Arthur. "It's just that…" _Excuse, gotta think of an excuse…_

As he racked his brain, D.W. came waltzing into the living room. "Yay! Yay!" she cheered. "I'm going to Mary Moo Cow on Ice! Mom said I can! Yay!"

"Huh?" said Arthur, surprised. "I thought you didn't like Mary Moo Cow anymore."

"But now she's on ice," D.W. pointed out. "_Ice_, Arthur."

"We're having a conversation, D.W.," said Binky impatiently. "Go suck on your dolls."

Arthur's glasses lit up. "I've got it!" he exclaimed. "I can't be your new study buddy because…I'm going to Mary Moo Cow on Ice!"

Binky's jaw dropped halfway to China.

"Yay!" shouted D.W. "Arthur's going to Mary Moo Cow on Ice with me!" She abruptly lowered her arms. Glaring suspiciously at her brother, she asked, "What are you trying to pull?"

* * *

to be continued 


	10. A Storm Is Coming

"You're kidding, right?" said Binky as he faded in and out of shock. 

_I wish I was_, thought Arthur. "No, it's the truth," he said out loud. "D.W. and I do a lot of things together now."

D.W. opened her mouth to protest, but noticed that her brother was winking furtively. "Uh, yeah, he's telling the truth, all right," she said with a nod of agreement. "He even went to Pony Land with me. It was like a dream come true."

_Pony Land?_ thought Binky. _Oh, gosh, it's Arthur who's gay!_

"Well, I can see you're too busy," said the bulldog nervously. "I'll have to find someone else to be my new study buddy. Hmm, what about George? _He_ never says no to me."

"Come on, Arthur," said D.W., eagerly grasping the boy's hand. "Nadine and I are planning a surprise birthday party for Vicita, and we could really use your help."

"Sure, D.W.," said Arthur with a goofy smile. By the time he was on his feet, Binky had already bolted out of the house.

* * *

Having been moved from the ER to a suite on the eighth floor of Katzenellenbogan Hospital, Tommy and Timmy dozed peacefully in separate beds. Other than the paleness of their countenances, Trixie Tibble could see nothing wrong with them. For anyone else, this would have been a reassuring sign. 

"Look at them!" she scolded the nurse. "They're at death's door!"

"By this time tomorrow they'll be fine," the man in the uniform told her.

"By this time tomorrow they could be _dead_," ranted Mrs. Tibble. "I'm not leaving this room until I see some experienced medical professionals working on my boys. Get Dr. House if you have to. I'll spare no expense."

"Ma'am," said the nurse impatiently, "Dr. House is a fictional character."

"I mean the _real_ Dr. House," said Trixie with urgency.

"I'll call him," said the nurse, lifting his cell phone to his ear. Turning his back to Mrs. Tibble, he whispered, "Hello, security?"

* * *

Drusilla Prufrock waved her slender fingers over the crystal ball and hummed ominously. "The spirits are greatly perturbed," she reported to Mrs. McGrady. "They can see something approaching…something calamitous…something that will change life in this city as we know it." 

"And _then_ do I win the lottery?" Mrs. McGrady inquired.

"Please, Sarah," said the fortune-teller, "I think this is a little more important than the lottery. The image is becoming clearer…I see people hiding in their basements…disorder in the streets…death! _Death!_"

"Are you sure you're not just picking up CNN?" said Mrs. McGrady.

"A storm is coming," Mrs. Prufrock went on. "A storm the likes of which we've never seen."

"Now you're getting the Weather Channel," said the cafeteria lady mockingly.

"Now I'm getting _nothing_," said the rat woman, dropping her hands in despair. "Your flippant attitude has angered the spirits."

She closed the psychic shop early, anxious to get home. Finding Rubella in the living room practicing her golf swing, she asked, "Any news from Prunella?"

"Yeah," her teenage daughter replied. "A policeman called."

"Oh, dear God," Mrs. Prufrock fretted. "It's beginning already."

At the station in Minnesota, the officer on duty handed the telephone receiver to Prunella. "It's your mom," he stated.

Overjoyed, the rat girl barely refrained from squealing. "Mom! It's me! I'm stuck and I need you to come get me!"

"I know, honey," her mother's voice uttered. "What about Mr. Haney and Sue Ellen? Are they all right?"

Prunella attempted to say, "They've been captured by aliens," but the words refused to leave her mouth.

"Prunie?" said Mrs. Prufrock with concern. "Are you there?"

"Yeah, Mom," said the frustrated girl. _Stupid aliens. Why won't they stop messing with my brain?_

"Where's Mr. Haney?" her mother asked again.

_I shot him_, Prunella wanted desperately to say. _The aliens made me do it. I'm their slave._

"He's fine," were the words that rolled off her tongue.

"I'm coming to get you, sweetie," said Mrs. Prufrock. "Stay put. Cooperate with the police. I love you."

Prunella laid down the phone and stared glumly at her skirt. _They'll make us all their slaves before it's over_, she thought.

* * *

On the Thrag station, Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r listened to a transmission from Earth. The voice of Gadfly informed him, "One of my agents discovered a stockpile of weapons at an abandoned ranch in Brainynerd. The militiamen aren't fooling around. We're in danger down here, Lieutenant." 

"Understood," said T'l'p'g'r. Turning aside, he said to Mr. Armstrong, "What course of action do you recommend?"

After a thoughtful pause the cat man replied, "Proceed immediately with Operation Disease Vector. I'll tell the Yordilian troops to stand at readiness."

In a small, darkened cell, the man known as the Doctor carefully probed the metal grates of the door with his fingers, searching for a point of weakness and a chance of escape.

Sue Ellen lay immobile on a mattress-like platform in the infirmary, looking at her surroundings through bleary eyes. Bits of memories of what had happened to April began to coalesce in her mind. Turning her curly head to the right, she observed that Mr. Haney was stretched out on the next bed over, his glasses still attached to his face, a variety of tubes leading into and out of his body.

_I'm dead_, she told herself. _When I watched myself grow old and die, that was my life. It's over._

* * *

To be continued 


	11. Room 101

The following morning, Francine walked into Mrs. Krantz's fifth-grade classroom to find that the number of pupils had swelled by a factor of three. The kids from Mr. Martens' and Miss Budge's classes had assembled, and all were competing for chances to talk with the strange-looking alien girl at the back of the room. 

"Hey, Francine," Jenna greeted her. "Come sit by me."

"Sure," said the monkey girl with a smile. As she took the seat next to Jenna, she remarked, "I'm sure glad to see you. With Muffy living on another planet, Sue Ellen in Minnesota, and Beat who-knows-where, there are no girls left to hang out with, except for Fern, and she's as boring as an electric drill."

"I'm also sitting right across from you, Francine," said Fern indignantly.

"I'll tell you what's boring," said Jenna. "My _class_ is boring. This is what, the second time this year an alien has visited your class? And what do _we_ get? An exchange student from Kazakhstan? Big fat hairy deal." _She'll never believe me if I tell her about the old gypsy woman who put a backwards-talking curse on us_, she thought.

A moose woman with short antlers stepped into the classroom. "I see you've all met our guest lecturer," she said in a sweet, high-pitched voice. "I'll turn the time over to her as soon as I've called the roll, okaaaay?"

"Right, like anybody's gonna stay home and miss _this_," said Arthur jokingly.

"Yeah," added Binky. "I've got uncontrollable diarrhea, but I came anyway."

Mrs. Krantz proceeded with the ritual of the roll call. "Binky Barnes."

Binky raised his hand. "May I be excused?"

"Buster Baxter, traveling. Van Cooper, moved away. Muffy Crosswire, moved away. Francine Frensky."

"Still here," said Francine.

"Sue Ellen Krantz, traveling. George Nordgren."

"Here," said the moose boy.

"Arthur Read."

"Here," said Arthur.

"Beatrice Simon, unaccounted for. Fern Walters."

"Here," said Fern.

Mrs. Krantz made a few pen marks on the sheet. "That makes a grand total of five children," she observed. "Now, at the request of Mr. Martens and Miss Budge, I'll read the rolls of the other two fifth-grade classes."

After she had dispensed with a long list of names, Jenny from the planet Kressida took the floor. "I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have," she said, and immediately a sea of hands flew up. She pointed a rubbery finger at a few of the kids, and finally concluded, "You, with the floppy ears."

"Yes," said Fern calmly. "I'd like to know what you did with Buster and his family."

"I…don't understand," said Jenny in her odd voice that sounded like three girls talking at once.

"I watched their condo," Fern stated. "They never left. I went inside, and nobody was home. Their car was still in the garage. Beat was last seen with them, so I'm guessing you made _her_ disappear as well."

Jenny only stared blankly. Francine groaned.

"I know you're involved with some kind of alien witness protection agency," Fern continued. "If you're hiding them to keep them out of danger, that's okay, but I think we have a right to know."

* * *

Unbeknownst to Fern, Beat and Buster were at that moment enjoying the amenities of their comfortable Torchwood apartment. Thanks to a wall-mounted spyglass, Buster had a bird's-eye view of downtown London, from Big Ben to Buckingham Palace. "That big Ferris wheel is called the London Eye," Beat told him. "It's the tallest in the world, next to the one that was just built in China."

"This would be easier if we had a window," Buster remarked. "I haven't seen a single window in this whole building. For all we know, we're at the center of the Earth."

"Silly goose," Beat chided him. "We'd burn to a crisp at the center of the Earth."

"Not if there's a super-powerful force field around us," said Buster excitedly.

"Boys and their force fields," said Beat with a sigh.

On the blue leather couch, Harry Mills was perusing a copy of the London Times. Looking up from the entertainment section, he said, "Your parents must be very worried about you, Beatrice. Don't you think it's time to tell Desirée that you're not part of the family?"

"Sorry, Harry," said Beat seriously. "I'm not leaving until the Doctor comes back. Since he hasn't yet, I can only assume that Earth is still under threat of alien invasion. That being so, I can't imagine a safer place on the planet than right here at Torchwood."

_

* * *

_

_It looks like a hospital_, thought Sue Ellen as she cautiously lowered herself from the bed. _It smells like a hospital. It must be the hospital where I died._

She tiptoed past a full-length mirror, and a red-haired girl with pointed cat ears stared back at her. _That's funny. I was a very, very old woman when I died, but now I'm a little girl again. Maybe I'm starting life all over._ She took a few more quiet steps, and suddenly came face-to-knees with a tall, grinning cat woman. _I recognize her_, Sue Ellen thought. _I looked just like her before I died._

"Come to Mommy, sweetheart," said the woman, sweeping her up by the armpits. "Don't be afraid. The bad man who took April is locked away. He'll never hurt us again."

"W-who's April?" Sue Ellen stammered.

In the Doctor's cell, two Thrag soldiers were strapping the muttonchopped Time Lord onto a tilted platform. His arms helplessly bound above his head, he watched Mr. Armstrong stroke his whiskers thoughtfully. "I don't want to resort to barbaric means," said the cat man, "so I suggest that you answer my questions willingly."

The Doctor struggled uselessly to free his hands. "Sorry, old chap," he said with forced calmness, "but my mother taught me never to talk to strangers." The next thing he felt was a metal-gloved Thrag hand slapping the smirk from his lips.

"Where is April?" Mr. Armstrong demanded. "And what do you know about the secret agreement between the Alliance and the Yordilian government?"

The Doctor could taste the blood welling up in his throat. "April is dead," he said carefully, "no doubt the victim of a thoughtless attempt at time travel. The other Time Lords would normally detect and fix such a problem, but they're all gone. As for your secret agreement, up to now I've only suspected that such a thing exists, so your confirmation is quite refreshing. Tell me, how much did you bribe the Alliance Grand Council for the privilege of invading Earth with impunity? Not that it makes any difference, since you _won't_ get away with it."

Mr. Armstrong smiled wickedly. "You know too much for your own good, Doctor. I'd rather not kill you, but I clearly can't allow you to leave this station alive, so it appears that you'll be boarding with us for a while. If you lead me to April, I'll see to it that you're put up in a comfortable suite. If you refuse, then I'm afraid we have only one room available at this time—Room 101."

"What's in Room 101?" the Doctor inquired.

"You know all too well what's in Room 101," said the cat man sinisterly. "The thing that torments you in your dreams. The worst thing in the world. _Your greatest fear._"

"Growing old and fat?" said the Doctor.

* * *

To be continued! Please review! 


	12. The Awakening

"What's the biggest thing you have?" Jenny asked the old man behind the counter. 

"The Big Pig Sundae," replied Mr. Menino. "If you can finish it, you _must_ be from outer space."

All five remaining members of Mrs. Krantz' class—Arthur, Francine, Binky, Fern, and George—had gathered at the Sugar Bowl to introduce their newfound alien friend to the joys of ice cream. "My planet has no cows, or mammals of any kind," she told them. "You can get something resembling ice cream there, but it's very expensive, and it's made from a synthetic milk substitute that causes me to break out in hives."

As the kids watched in awe, Jenny shoved one heaping spoonful after another into her lipless mouth. "This is great," she remarked. "_Everything_ here is great. I don't know why I waited so long to get stranded on Earth."

"Her appetite's even bigger than Buster's," Francine marveled.

"Speaking of Buster," George asked the alien, "you don't happen to know where he is, do you?"

"No, I don't," replied Jenny with a mouth full of ice cream, "and I like it that way."

"I don't believe you, Jenny," said Fern. "I think you know where Buster _and_ Beat are, but you're holding out on us."

"Knock knock," said Francine.

"Who's there?" said Fern.

"Sherlock."

"Sherlock who?"

"I'd sherlock it if you'd shut up."

"Let's change the subject," said Arthur. "What did you say your real name is, Jenny?"

"Ablikablukapelifrotz," answered the artichoke-headed girl.

"Why did your parents give you such a long name?" asked Francine.

"My parents didn't name me," replied Jenny. "Kressidan babies are assigned names by the government."

"Well, _that_ takes all the fun out of having a baby," said Fern.

"The point is to eliminate the confusion of two people having the same name," Jenny explained. "We used to choose our own names, but when mass media was invented, everyone started naming their children after movie stars and famous singers."

"Whoa," said Francine in wonder. "That's starting to happen on _our_ planet. I know five girls named Britney."

Jenny scooped up the melted remains of her sundae and drained the spoon into her mouth. Waving her slender hand at Mr. Menino, she said, "I'd like another Big Pig Sundae, please."

The proprietor froze. The waffle cone in his hand fell to the floor.

"What?" Jenny responded to the astonished stares of the kids. "I'm still hungry."

* * *

Beat and Buster were also enjoying ice cream, served to them by the friendly, Cockney-speaking staff at the Torchwood Café. They walked on either side of Desirée, Beat with her single scoop of vanilla, and Buster with his tower of sardine ripple, curry chocolate chip, Szechuan praline pecan, and the Mystery Flavor of the Week.

"Let me know if you need help finishing that," said Buster to the rabbit-aardvark girl.

Beat chuckled sardonically. "I'll manage, thank you very much."

They rode the elevator up to the thirty-second floor, and walked hastily to their apartment, licking away at their rapidly melting treats. As they approached the door, their long ears picked up an unsettling sound—a heated argument between a man and a woman.

"It's Harry and Bitzi," said Beat, worried. "What do you suppose has them so worked up?"

"Omigosh," said Buster squeamishly. "It's just like when Mom and Dad broke up." The cone trembled in his unsteady hand.

"Relax, children," said Desirée. "Your parents are just letting off a bit of steam."

"I'm not hungry anymore," said the ill-looking Buster. Raising his stack of ice cream toward Beat, he said, "Would you like…"

"No, thanks," said Beat abruptly. "Now that I've got a girlish figure, I want to keep it."

Inside the suite, Petula rested in a crib while Harry and Bitzi hurled exclamations at each other. "I've had as much of your unhealthy obsession with that baby as I can take," Harry complained. "You've stabbed your friends in the back because of her. You've put your _real_ family in danger because of her."

"I haven't stabbed anyone in the back," Bitzi retorted. "What are you talking about?"

"You _lied_ about Mrs. Powers so you could get custody," Harry accused her.

"What part of it was a lie?" said Bitzi incredulously. "She lost all her memories of Alan. She's unfit to raise another child."

"She is _not_ unfit!" insisted Harry. "There's nothing wrong with her mind. They _both_ lost their memories of him."

"Which makes it _twice_ as suspicious," said Bitzi.

"Listen to reason, darling," said Harry earnestly. "What kind of life can we expect if Petula stays with us? What kind of life can Buster expect? We'll be fugitives, running and hiding our whole lives through. You know as well as I do that there's an invasion coming, and from the sound of things, the aliens care less about conquering Earth than they do about putting little Petula to death."

"I said I'd defend her with my life," said Bitzi with determination, "and I meant it. While I'm alive, nobody comes between me and Petula. Not even you, Harry."

"Listen to me!" said her husband, gesturing angrily. "You don't _have_ to give up your life for her. If you leave her in the care of the Torchwood people, she'll be perfectly safe, and we can go on with our business. There are plenty of _other_ orphaned babies who are waiting for you to love them."

"I don't want to hear another word," said Bitzi, dragging her ears over her temples.

* * *

On TWA Flight 751 bound for London's Heathrow Airport sat a cat woman in a sleeveless pink blouse and jeans. She held a celebrity gossip magazine open in her hands, but her mind was too distracted to focus on the latest allegations that Paris Hilton's chihuahua was gay.

_I don't like to think about the people who will suffer because of what I'm about to do_, she mused, _but an order is an order._

In rural Brainynerd, Minnesota, dozens of men wearing caps and grubby jackets, and even a few women, filed into the town hall. The occasion was a meeting of the local militia, and the single item on the agenda was to eliminate the alien threat, peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary. In the shadows of the nearby woods, a cat woman waited and watched.

Several hundred kids and their parents lined up outside the Elwood City Ice Palace, where the large marquee advertised the current attraction: Mary Moo Cow on Ice. Arthur stood in the middle of the line next to D.W. and his father, wishing earnestly that he could suddenly transform into a grotesque fly creature so as to not be recognized by his friends. At the tail end of the line, a cat woman and a little red-headed cat girl stepped up to their places.

On the eighth floor of the Katzenellenbogan Memorial Hospital, Tommy and Timmy slept like angels in their beds. A nurse walked in, measured their temperatures with an oral thermometer, nodded with satisfaction, and left. The boys dozed on.

On the third floor of the hospital, Tegan Powers groggily opened her eyes. _Where am I?_ she wondered.

* * *

To be continued 


	13. When It Began

Tegan tried to lift her head, but found that her neck muscles were inadequate for the task. Indeed, moving her eyes required significant effort. She managed to discern that she was in a horizontal position, dressed in white pajamas, with a needle fastened to the inside of her left elbow by bandages. _I'm in a hospital_, she realized. _The last thing I remember is trying to get Professor Frink's helmet away from Claire before she killed…_

_Oh, gosh_, she thought with alarm. Her withered arms and legs barely rose up when she willed them to move. _If I'm here, where are the others? Where are Alan, and Fern, and Victor, and C.V., and Iris? Did Claire kill them all?_

* * *

Once the riotous noises from inside the suite had subsided, Buster and Beat worked up enough courage to enter. Buster unlocked the door using a card given to him by Desirée, peeked inside, and saw only his mother, who was feeding Petula with a formula-filled bottle. "Uh…Mom?" he said sheepishly. 

"Come in, Buster," said Bitzi, her voice strained.

The two long-eared children tiptoed inside, fearing a misstep might trigger another explosion. "Is everything all right?" Beat ventured to ask.

"Everything's fine," said the rabbit woman flatly. "Harry's just having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings."

"You're not gonna split up with him, are you?" Buster inquired, or rather, blurted out.

"Of course not," said Bitzi, pressing the baby girl to her shoulder for a burping session. "Nothing will ever come between me and Harry."

* * *

When it began… 

…Arthur was seated in the second row from the top, flanked by D.W. on one side and Mr. Read on the other. He stared glumly at the ice rink and the zamboni driver who was smoothing it strip by strip. _I wish I could fast-forward through this_, he thought. "I must be the oldest kid here," he remarked aloud.

"No, you're not," said D.W., who held the string of a Mini Moo balloon in one hand and a wad of cotton candy in the other. "Alberto's here with Vicita. He must be _really_ unhappy."

Five rows down, the little Ecuadorian girl squealed with delight as a man and woman skated to the center of the rink to set down some props. "It hasn't started yet, Vicita," said her older brother. "They're just getting ready."

"You mean it gets _better?_" Vicita marveled. "¡Que alegria!"

Alberto smiled wistfully at her. _Having a five-year-old sister is so much fun,_ he thought.

Kids filled three-quarters of the seats—eager, impatient, _loud_ kids. They waited breathlessly for the house lights to dim, and for Mary Moo Cow and her entourage to sail onto the ice.

Behind the drawn curtains, a dark-complexioned rabbit man with a boomerang-like moustache zipped up the front of his frilly costume, and reached for the large cow head that would complete his disguise. As he started to mount it over his head, a cat woman and a little girl appeared in the near-darkness of the hallway.

"So, you're the famous Mary Moo Cow," said the woman in a serious voice. "My daughter's been dying to meet you."

The man's bulky skates clicked against the floor as he turned. "I'm just a professional skater, ma'am," he uttered with a South American accent. "The real Mary Moo Cow is the one you meet at the shopping mall."

"Mommy, I'm disappointed," said the young cat girl.

"You should be taking your seats," said the skater, concealing his face behind that of a grinning cow. "The show is about to begin."

"It certainly is," said the cat woman. On her way to the bleachers, she drew a tiny aerosol can from her purse, flipped off its top, and sprayed a pale green mist into the air. She then changed course and headed quickly for the exit, the red-haired girl in tow.

The lights went down. D.W. clasped her hands. "It's starting!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. Arthur opened his mouth to say "Not so loud!", only to be nearly deafened by the cumulative cheers of thousands of excited children.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!" boomed the announcer's voice over the rafter-mounted speakers. "I give you…Mary Moo Cow on Ice!"

The curtains flew open. Unseen by the audience, the skater in the cow outfit stood motionlessly in the shadows at the edge of the rink. The spotlight operator clenched her teeth. _Let's go, Raoul_, she mentally urged him.

The man in the suit, however, had come to a petrifying realization. _The ice isn't safe_, he told himself. _It's melting…breaking into chunks…if I skate, I'll die!_

Tense seconds passed. The kids' cheers turned into impatient murmurs. "What's she waiting for?" wondered D.W.

"For the cows to come home," Arthur joked. "What else?"

An aardvark woman in the first row suddenly leaped up. "There's no air!" she wailed. "I can't breathe! I'll suffocate!"

She was followed by a nearby cat man, who frantically brushed his arms as he stood. "Ants!" he cried in terror. "They're all over me! They're under my skin!"

Within moments, both mothers and fathers were bolting out of their seats throughout the Ice Palace. "Thieves! Purse snatchers!" exclaimed one woman. "Your kids are covered with germs!" shouted another. "Get out of my brain, all of you!" yelled a man.

The scene frightened Vicita, who tugged at her brother's sweater. "What's happening?" she asked timidly.

"I…I don't know," said Alberto, confused. "I…I…" He unexpectedly rose, waving his fists in the air. "I'm the king of the world!" he bellowed.

The wave of frenzied behavior crept steadily toward the spot where Arthur and D.W. sat with their father. "What's everybody so angry about?" said Arthur. "It's just a stupid ice show."

"Maybe it's _part_ of the show," D.W. theorized.

"Oh, yeah," said Arthur sarcastically. "Mass hysteria. _Very_ entertaining."

One after another, the adults in their row were seized upon by irrational fears. "Aliens take over my body while I'm asleep!" "Every single person in this building will be dead by morning!" "Wake up, you idiots! 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' is really _butter!_"

And then, to the mutual horror of Arthur and D.W., a crazed expression formed on the face of Mr. Read. "Arthur, don't hit your sister!" said the aardvark man angrily.

"I'm _not_ hitting her!" Arthur insisted.

"You're _thinking_ about hitting her!" his father snarled.

Arthur had no time to make sense of this claim, as the wild-eyed audience members were crowding towards him and his sister. "D.W., get under your seat!" he exclaimed, and she hopped down to comply. Such was his rush to escape the stampede of panicked feet that his glasses were knocked from his face by an armrest. He grabbed hold of what appeared to be a blurry D.W., and held her close. Shoes scrambled this way and that, crushing his precious lenses underneath. He couldn't tell if his father was still there.

* * *

To be continued 


	14. Speed

When it began… 

…night had descended upon Brainynerd, Minnesota. In the police station, Prunella was eagerly putting on her jacket as the headlights of her mother's car rounded the corner and shone through the windows. "I'm finally going home," she said with relief.

"I can't believe your mom got here so quickly," remarked the officer on duty. "What is she, a race car driver?"

"No," replied the rat girl with a smile. "It's because Elwood City is so conveniently located. It's within a day's drive of Minnesota, Washington D.C., _and_ the seashore."

Mrs. Prufrock, numerous bead necklaces poking out through the flaps of her turquoise coat, rushed through the glass doors into the station. "Prunie!" she gushed. "My baby, you're safe!"

Prunella grabbed her mother around the legs. "I'm so glad you're here," she said tearfully. "I was so scared."

The rat woman gave the officer a grateful look. "Thanks for keeping my little girl safe," she said.

"Just doin' my job, ma'am," said the policeman meekly.

"Stand up for a minute," said Mrs. Prufrock, mincing up to the desk. "I'd like to have a look at your palm."

The confused man rose from his chair and stretched out his hand, allowing the rat woman to probe it with her long, unpainted fingernails. "What're you doin', ma'am?" he inquired.

"This is _my_ job," she said simply. "I'm a palm reader, among other things."

Seconds went by as the bemused policeman watched her trace the lines in his skin. "What do you see?" he asked her.

Mrs. Prufrock withdrew her fingers, took a deep breath, and paused. "Don't eat the chicken," she warned him.

Prunella and her mother were soon on the road, following the officer's directions to the highway. As they passed by a sign with the greeting WELCOME TO BRAINYNERD, AMERICA'S MAPLE SYRUP CAPITAL NO MATTER WHAT VERMONT SAYS, Mrs. Prufrock turned to the little girl and asked, "You said you were scared. What were you scared of?"

_I wish I could tell you_, thought Prunella. "The aliens," she said aloud. "They used mind control to make me shoot Mr. Haney." _What the heck…? I just told her!_

Mrs. Prufrock gaped. "You _shot_ Principal Haney?" She looked up just in time to swerve away from a guardrail.

"I stole Dad's gun," Prunella admitted. "I didn't do it on purpose. They _made_ me." _They wouldn't let me tell the truth before. Why aren't they trying to stop me now?_

"Where is he?" the rat woman asked frantically. "Is he all right? Did you tell the police? Where's Sue Ellen?"

Her barrage of questions was interrupted when a man appeared in her headlights, standing bowl-legged in the middle of the Brainynerd street. She pounded on the brake pedal, and the car came to a halt only feet away. The panicked-looking man wasted no time in running up to the driver's window and repeatedly slapping it with his hands.

Mrs. Prufrock flipped the lever to bring down the power window. "Is there a problem?" she inquired.

Saliva sprayed from the man's lips as he ranted, "You're next! YOU'RE NEXT!"

He pressed down on the window as Mrs. Prufrock tried to close it. "He's some kind of lunatic," she remarked to her daughter.

"They'll take over your bodies!" shrieked the man as the window shut out his voice. "They can follow you anywh—"

She stepped on the accelerator, only to apply the brakes again when she saw a stream of frightened townspeople fleeing from the town hall. "What's going on?" she wondered. "Is there a fire?"

Two men and a woman stumbled into the glare of her headlights, pointed at the car, and ran in the other direction with all their might. "The whole _town's_ crazy," she said, shifting the vehicle into reverse. "We're going back to the police station, and we're not leaving until Principal Haney and Sue Ellen are found. Another night without sleep won't kill me."

"Maybe they're just afraid of the aliens," said Prunella. "I know _I_ am."

Mrs. Prufrock turned her pointed nose around, looking over her shoulder for wanderers in the street. As she readied herself to back up, an inexplicable terror gripped her heart. The words of the crazed man suddenly made sense. She recognized the danger.

"There's no time," she said fearfully, moving the stick to the drive position. "They're coming. They're right behind us!"

"Who is?" asked Prunella. The instant the words left her mouth, the car lurched forward violently. The frenzied citizens were scarcely able to leap out of the way as it careened through them like a blind bull.

The car picked up speed—twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five miles per hour. "Mom!" exclaimed Prunella, watching a signpost zoom by. "It's a school zone! You're going way too fast!"

"I won't let them catch us!" cried the anxious rat woman. Two blocks later she made a sharp turn onto the highway entrance; the centrifugal force threatened to tear Prunella out of her seat belt. Their speed only increased as they sailed up the ramp—fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five.

"That's fast enough, Mom," said Prunella worriedly. "They'll never catch up now." Her mother's only response was to put even more pressure on the accelerator. The car's rear tires sprayed bits of gravel as they latched onto the surface of the highway.

Prunella watched the asphalt fly under them like a shower of tiny meteors. "Mom, slow down!" she protested, but the speedometer only continued to climb. Ninety miles per hour…ninety-five…one hundred…

----

To be continued


	15. Leaving London

When it began… 

…Beat and Buster were seated lazily on the sofa in their comfortable Torchwood suite. The lamp was at its lowest level, and Petula's gurgling was faintly audible from the other room.

"So," said Buster, "when are you gonna tell Desirée that you're not one of us?"

Beat sighed. "Never," she said wistfully. "I don't want to be separated from you, Buster."

The rabbit boy's eyes became moist. "I don't want to lose you either, Beatrice," he said earnestly.

He leaned closer. Beat pursed her lips and aimed them at his face, her heart beating wildly…

"Wake up," a harsh voice whispered.

"Huh?" Beat's eyes opened narrowly and saw Harry Mills towering over them, fully dressed in his own clothes, his hair unruly.

"Quiet," the rabbit man cautioned her. "Bitzi's still asleep."

Beat raised her arms and let out a mighty yawn. When she looked again, there was Buster, his ears poking through the neck of a T-shirt.

"Put on your dress from home," Harry instructed her, "because that's where we're going."

"So soon?" protested the rabbit-aardvark girl. "But I was having such a lovely holiday."

Still half-asleep, she trudged through the nearly complete darkness toward the closet where her red dress was hanging. Being the gentlemen they were, Harry and Buster tiptoed out of the room while she changed out of the silk nightgown Desirée had loaned her.

They departed the Torchwood flat in silence. Once they had made it halfway from the door to the elevator, Beat asked the question burning in her mind: "What about Bitzi and Petula?"

"They'll be safe here," replied Harry.

Once inside the lift, he hunted for the button that would take them to ground level, and finally settled on the first floor. As they descended, Beat remarked, "Won't that be bloody expensive, traveling back and forth to London to be with your wife?"

"Yes," said Harry in a subdued tone. "Bloody expensive indeed."

"It's okay, Beat," said Buster. "I'm used to being away from my mom."

"I still think we should wait for the Doctor to come back," said Beat, unaware that the friendly Time Lord was still a prisoner of the Thrags.

"If he wants us, he'll find us," said Harry confidently.

When the elevator doors opened, they beheld that a bored-looking security guard and a row of badge readers stood between them and an apparent street exit. Without a pause, Harry took Buster and Beat by their wrists and pulled them along. As he passed by the desk where the guard sat, he said, "We've had a lovely stay, but we must be going."

"Sorry, guv'nor," said the non-anthro man who sported a holster and pistol on his hip. "Can't let ye go without seein' yer clearance."

"Clearance?" said Harry, flustered. "We didn't need a clearance to get _in._"

"New security rules," said the guard. "I don't like 'em, but I gotta enforce 'em."

"That's ridiculous," said Harry firmly. "This is a research institute, not a prison. You have no legal right to keep us here."

"I've got something," said Beat, reaching into her breast pocket. Pulling out a small piece of bronze-plated metal bearing an image of a sailing ship, she presented it to the guard and asked, "Will this do?"

The man glanced briefly at the shiny object, then waved his hand. "Move along," he said dismissively.

The exit doors swung open without resistance. Harry, Beat, and Buster found themselves on a London thoroughfare, bathed in the light from the street lamps and the surrounding buildings. Small groups of young people wandered about, chatting and smoking, while an occasional car rolled by on the left side of the road.

"What _is_ that, Beat?" asked Harry, gesturing at the plaquette in her hand.

"It's a _Blue Peter_ badge," the girl replied proudly. "It gets you into museums and shows for free. The children's show _Blue Peter_ gives them to kids who accomplish some great thing."

"How did you get yours?" Harry inquired.

Beat shrugged. "I ordered it off the Internet."

"Hey, Beat," said Buster, "what's a pub?"

"There's no time for sightseeing," said Harry, gently pushing the two kids along. "We need to get out of here before people start staring at our ears."

A stubbly-faced man wearing an old green overcoat and a fedora approached them. "Ahoy, you with the ears," he called out rudely. "Can you spare a pound?"

Harry scowled. "Haven't you ever seen a rabbit person before?"

"Of course I have, mate," responded the shabby man, raising his fedora. "My hat used to belong to one. See the holes?"

The beggar passed on, leaving Harry to deliberate. "We'll have to fly back to the States," he thought aloud. "Beat, you know this city better than I do. Can you lead us to an airport?"

"Of course I can, Harry." The girl stepped onto the street, whistled loudly, and cried, "Taxi!"

The ride by cab to Heathrow Airport lasted half an hour, and the driver gratefully accepted his fare in U.S. dollars. Left in the open air a few yards from the terminal doors, they examined their surroundings curiously. "Last time I came to this airport, it was wall-to-wall people," Buster related.

"It's still early," said Harry, making for the entrance to Terminal 3.

They walked past the baggage carousels and the auto rental kiosks, but saw hardly a soul. A girl in an airline uniform peeked at them from behind a column. With their sensitive ears they understood what she was muttering to herself: "Please don't hurt me…I haven't done anything wrong…"

Stranger still was the ranting male voice from the ceiling speakers, which became clearer as they approached the escalators: "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and I am angry with the people of England…"

Buster and Beat hopped onto the moving steps. "This place sure is creepy at night," Buster commented.

"Wait a minute," said Beat suddenly. "Where's Harry?"

They quickly turned, but the rabbit man was nowhere to be seen. "Dad!" Buster shouted.

The two children nearly knocked each other over in their rush down the metal stairs. It took them only a moment to find Harry, who was leaning against an airline service desk, and quivering. "What's wrong?" Beat asked him.

Harry wiped the sweat from his brow with a shirt sleeve. "Terrorists," he mumbled. "The airport's full of them. They're masquerading as security officers."

"I don't see any terrorists," said the rabbit-aardvark girl.

"I can hear them," said Harry, his eyes darting back and forth. "They're plotting to kill me. They don't care about anyone else—they just want _me._"

In the time it took for Buster and Beat to turn and stare at each other, Harry bolted toward the terminal exit, bumping forcefully into Beat as he ran. "They won't get me!" he bellowed. "I'll take an ocean liner to the States!"

Beat shook her head as she watched him disappear into the night. "If I didn't know better," she said to Buster, "I'd say your father is suffering from paranoid delusions."

----

To be continued


	16. Prunellavision

While Beat and Buster searched Heathrow's darkened grounds for the terrified Harry Mills, halfway around the planet a yellow Corvette tore down a moonlit Minnesota highway at a speed well over 120 miles per hour. From the passenger seat, Prunella could discern that a downhill slope was approaching, accompanied by a gentle curve and a guardrail. 

_We'll never make it around the bend at this speed_, the rat girl worried. "Mom, we're gonna crash!" she yelled, but her mother only stared forward with glazed eyes, her foot pressing the accelerator to its limit.

She felt gravity pull at her stomach as the fast-moving car reached the top of the grade. The curve, and a hillside of unknown steepness, waited for them less than half a mile away. _I've got to think of something_, Prunella told herself, _or I'll end up a pile of mangled flesh. Hmm…Mom thinks we're being pursued by alien body snatchers, just like that crazy man on the street. Wait, I've got it!_

Turning to Mrs. Prufrock, she made the most serious facial expression she could manage, and intoned menacingly, "It is useless to resist, human. In no time at all you will become one of us, just like your daughter has!"

The single-mindedness in the rat woman's eyes changed to stark terror. Screaming with fright, she rammed her foot into the brake pedal and held it down as if her life depended on _stopping now_. The night's silence was pierced by the harsh squealing of tires being shredded by pavement. Prunella felt as if her seat belt and shoulder harness were dragging her into the depths of the ocean. Just as the rear wheels were attempting to catch up with the front wheels, the screeching finally gave way to calm, and the vehicle became motionless on the roadside.

Before Prunella had a chance to sigh with relief, her mother quickly unfastened her belt, threw open the door, and bounded away without bothering to apply the parking brake. "Mom, come back!" the girl cried, but she suddenly had another danger to contend with—the Corvette was starting to roll forwards, and no one was controlling it.

_I've got to get out!_ she realized. However, by the time she had taken off her belt and yanked on the door handle, the car had already coasted off the road and lost its momentum among the grass and weeds. She set her feet down in a strange and scary forest, filled with the relentless chirping of possibly undead insects.

_Okay, now what?_ she asked herself. _I'm in the middle of nowhere, my mom's gone cuckoo, Sue Ellen and the principal are in the hands of the aliens, and I need to go to the bathroom._ As the hopelessness of her predicament became obvious, tears formed in her beadlike eyes. She sobbed miserably, wiping her nose on a rag from her skirt pocket, for what seemed like several minutes; then the unexpected appearance of flashing blue and red lights interrupted her wallow in despair.

"Can I help you, little girl?" asked the tawny-headed woman in the blue uniform. "Are you lost?"

Prunella nodded weakly. _The police are here_, she thought. _The day is saved._

"Don't be afraid," said the policewoman tenderly. As she put out a hand to caress Prunella's shoulder, the rat girl pulled out her cloth and began to wipe the mucus from her nose.

The officer withdrew her hand, gaping in horror. "Oh, God," she exclaimed. "Your face…it's covered with…with germs…with diseases…with _filth!_ I mustn't touch you! I'll get sick and _die_ if I touch you!"

"Wait!" said Prunella earnestly, but the policewoman wouldn't be deterred from retreating to her squad car.

Her eyes started to mist up again. Through them, two other individuals watched the officer drive away, witnessing the event on a video screen. One was Hank Armstrong, and the other was the muttonchopped man of mystery who called himself the Doctor.

Bound to a gurney in his cell, the indignant Time Lord wriggled and tried to free his wrists from the straps around them. "How utterly cruel," he protested. "As if it's not enough that you invaded her privacy and stripped her of free will, now you've dumped her off in the woods with no one to care for her, the poor girl."

Mr. Armstrong, still wearing his gray prison uniform, altered the image on the screen by flipping a switch. "If you don't like Prunellavision," he said, grinning at the Doctor, "there are many other channels to choose from—CNN, the BBC, Euro TV."

"This just in," said the bristly face of Wolf Blitzen, reporter for CNN. "The mass paranoia that gripped Washington D.C. during the past few hours is now manifesting itself in downtown Manhattan. Now you may be asking yourself, 'Aren't New Yorkers _already_ paranoid?' Yes, of course they are—but when the _tourists_ get that way, you know there's a problem."

Mr. Armstrong flipped to the BBC, where a jacketed newswoman was reporting from the center of London. "At Picadilly Circus, the people on the street are being seized upon by outlandish fears. Some say they're being watched by space aliens; some claim to be dying of mysterious diseases; some believe that secret agents or terrorists are trying to kill them. Only the children seem immune to this strange influence. Public transportation has ground to a halt throughout London, as…what's this, then? You…you want me to take off my clothes? All of you? Every bloody one of you in the bloody viewing audience? Don't deny it! I know what you're thinking, you perverts!"

The Doctor smiled nonchalantly. "I've got to hand it to you," he said to the cat man, "it's incredibly ingenious—an aggressive pathogen that induces schizophrenia-like delusions in human adults. Ingenious, but doomed to failure nonetheless."

"Doomed to failure?" said Mr. Armstrong. "Why do you say that?"

"Quite simple," said the confident Time Lord. "I'm going to get out of here, and I'm going to stop you."

"Then you'd better have a powerful deity on your side," said Mr. Armstrong, his tone becoming grim, "because nothing short of a miracle will save you from our hands."

In the space station's infirmary, Sue Ellen sat over the edge of her bed while Mrs. Armstrong attempted to reason with her. "You're not dead," said the orange-haired cat woman. "You didn't watch yourself die, you watched _April_ die."

Sue Ellen shook her head. "I think April's a person you made up," she said incredulously.

"No, honey," her mother insisted. "April came to us from the future because she thought we were going to be murdered. She was just like you, but older. That's why it looked like _you_ were dying when she died."

The little girl sniffled sadly. "I'm gonna be nothing but skin and bones, all ugly and wrinkled, when I get old," she lamented.

"That's not true, sweetie," Mrs. Armstrong assured her. "With all the advances being made by Yordilian cosmetologists and plastic surgeons, there are more and more glamorous corpses every year."

Sue Ellen closed her eyes tightly. _There's no such person as April_, she thought with convinction. _It was my own future I saw, not someone else's. She's only trying to make me feel better._

"Mom, I want to see the Doctor," she spoke up.

"I'll go get her," said Mrs. Armstrong, stepping away.

"No, not _that_ Doctor," said the cat girl. "I'm talking about the man in the blue box—the man who killed me."

----

to be continued


	17. King of the World

At one end of a long vinyl mat, Francine had placed ten Polly Locket dolls in a standing position. Jenna, her fingers tightening around the child-sized bowling ball, her gaze fixed on the "pins", readied herself to hurl another strike. Her movements were carefully controlled but graceful as she let her arm swing, sending the ball on a collision course with the dolls. All ten were knocked over, and the ball slammed into a pillow Francine had set down to protect the wall. 

"Good job, Jenna," said Francine, jotting down numbers on a score card. "You got a strike in the tenth frame. That means you get another turn."

"Cool," said the stringy-haired cat girl.

Just as she was picking up the ball, Mrs. Frensky stuck her head into the room. "No bowling in the house," she ordered.

"This isn't a house," Jenna told her. "It's an _apartment._"

"I've seen Fern bowl," remarked Francine as she watched Jenna take another shot. "She's lucky if the ball stays in her lane."

"Muffy isn't a good bowler either," Jenna pointed out, "but you were best friends with her."

"Yeah, well, Muffy's different," said Francine. "She's rich."

Jenna gave her a bemused look. "You were friends with Muffy only because she was rich?"

"That," Francine admitted, "plus we had the same middle name."

"I don't think that's right," said Jenna. "You shouldn't be a person's friend just because she gives you stuff."

"She didn't _give_ me stuff," Francine corrected her. "I had to work for it. See the Rat Woman action figure with the spring-action grapple?" she added, pointing to the shelf. "Muffy made me take a dance class for it. A _dance class_, Jenna."

"Dance classes are stupid," the cat girl commented.

"Wanna see my dance shoes?" Francine asked her. "They're in the back of the closet, gathering dust along with my dress. Last time I looked, a family of spiders had moved into one of them."

"Girls, get in here!" they heard Mr. Frensky's urgent cry.

Francine leaped up from her bed, following Jenna into the living room. Her parents were watching the local news on TV, and as the girls quickly realized, something serious was taking place. "The nature of the incident is unclear at this moment," the poodle man on the screen reported. "Eyewitnesses claim to have seen people running out of the Elwood City Ice Palace in large numbers, many of them exhibiting paranoid, or even hysterical, behavior."

"Omigosh!" exclaimed Francine. "That's where Arthur and D.W. are!"

Arthur and D.W. were indeed at the Ice Palace, cowering under their seats as crazed audience members ran by and crushed everything under their feet—including Arthur's glasses. After a few very long minutes, the forest of stockings and shoes thinned out to the point that D.W. ventured to climb out of her hiding place. To the little girl's astonishment, the bleachers had been almost completely emptied of adults, save for a few who were either glancing about in terror or sobbing into their hands. Of the many children who remained, some tried in vain to reason with their parents, while others wandered in confusion, tears streaming down their faces.

"What's happening?" the aardvark girl asked loudly. "Where's Mary Moo Cow? Where's Dad?"

Arthur stood up cautiously, the interior of the Ice Palace a blur to his pinpoint eyes. "I can't see him anywhere," he told his sister. "I can't see _anyone_ anywhere."

"I wanna go home," said D.W., her voice weak and timid. "Take me home, big brother."

"I would, if I could see," said Arthur.

A girlish squeal met their ears. "D.W.! D.W.!" It was Vicita, scurrying up the stairway toward their location.

Before she could reach them, her older brother Alberto fell upon her, seizing her tightly around the waist. "You're staying right here!" he barked. "I'm the king of the world, and you have to do what I say!"

Vicita wailed and wiggled. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"Let her go!" shouted D.W., who was leading her nearsighted brother by the hand.

"You can't tell me what to do!" Alberto snapped at her. "I'm the king of the world!"

"No, you're not!" D.W. retorted. "You're not even the king of your pants!"

_What does that even mean?_ wondered Arthur just as he blindly tripped over a stair, dragging D.W. down the steps with him.

Vicita flounced about, but her brother's grip was too strong to escape. "Arthur! D.W.! Help me!" she pleaded.

An idea came to Arthur as he brushed off the dust and chewing gum stuck to his yellow turtleneck. "Hey, Alberto," he said mockingly. "See that guy over there?" Pointing at a fat, anxious-looking man, he went on, "He says _he's_ the king of the world."

"Oh, _does_ he?" Alberto relaxed his arms, allowing Vicita to drop to the floor. "We'll see who's the _real_ king of the world."

Arthur fled, D.W. and Vicita pulling him along by the arms, as the Ecuadorian youth confronted the fat gentleman. "You're not the king of the world," he said threateningly. "_I'm_ the king of the world."

"So you're the king of the world, are you?" said the frightened man. "In that case, would you mind asking the IRS to stop probing my thoughts?"

The three children reached the main doors of the Ice Palace, only to behold an unfamiliar world lying beyond them. Nothing had changed, except for the ranting, arguing, and trembling audience members who filled the parking lot and the street, and the fact that they no longer had a mentally sound grownup to guide them.

"Okay, Arthur," D.W. demanded. "Where do we go from here?"

The aardvark boy waved his finger indecisively. "Uh, let's go towards the big, green, blurry thing over there. Geez, D.W., how should I know? I can't see."

Vicita turned to her neighbor and friend. "Looks like you and I will have to find the way home, D.W.," she said bravely.

They began to walk, Arthur resting his hands on their shoulders for direction. The only objects he could make out with certainty were the flashing lights of the police cars.

----

For the entertainment of his "guest", Mr. Armstrong had left the TV screen in the wall tuned in to Euro TV. _It's happening everywhere_, thought the Doctor, still helplessly fastened to a platform. _Paris, Moscow, Beijing, São Paulo…even Cardiff. What's Cardiff ever done?_

The news broadcasts spoke of nothing but the attacks of mass hysteria in the world's major cities. Just as the Doctor decided he had seen enough, the diagonal bars of the cell door slid open, allowing two more cat people to enter—Mrs. Armstrong and her little girl, Sue Ellen.

"Forgive me for not standing," the Time Lord quipped.

"My daughter wanted to talk to you," said the cat woman, her voice firm but unthreatening. "This isn't a bad time, is it?"

"No, not at all," said the Doctor. "My door is always open."

Sue Ellen stood at the side of the gurney, her eyes glaring pitilessly at the bound captive. After a long, bitter silence, she uttered, "You killed me."

The Doctor pursed his lips thoughtfully. "If that's true," he said, "then you're the loveliest, healthiest dead girl I've ever had the pleasure of meeting."

"She's a bit mixed up," said Mrs. Armstrong apologetically. "It's the shock of seeing April die."

"There _is_ no April, Mom," said Sue Ellen sharply. Reaching into the pouch on her skirt, she continued, "I don't know why I came back after he killed me. All I know is, he pointed _this weapon_ at me, and I grew old and died."

In the cat girl's palm lay the black, tubular object the Doctor had been holding at the moment they had met.

"Oh, that," said the prisoner, chuckling. "That's no weapon. It's my sonic screwdriver."

"You mean…it's just a tool?" said Mrs. Armstrong in astonishment.

"Don't listen to him!" Sue Ellen snapped at her mother.

"Have no fear, ma'am," said the Doctor calmly. "Even if she knew how to use it, she can't hurt anybody with it."

"We'll see about that," said Sue Ellen, her fingers tinkering with the row of tiny buttons that resembled a ridge along the device. "I wonder what _this_ one does," she added, pointing the glass-tipped end toward the Doctor.

She pushed a button, but he only smiled. "Nothing," he said flippantly. "Absolutely nothing. But don't give up."

"Be careful, sweetie," Mrs. Armstrong warned the girl. "We don't want him dead just yet. He may have useful information."

Sue Ellen experimented with a few more buttons; the sonic device vibrated slightly, but had no apparent effect on the Doctor. Finally, when she pressed the second button down from the lens, a harsh clicking sound reverberated through the prison cell. She looked up at the gurney, hoping to witness the spectacle of the Time Lord aging into a decrepit wraith.

What she saw was something entirely different—the straps around the Doctor's wrists and ankles had somehow come loose. Upon recognizing this, he flung himself from the cold platform, landed only inches from Sue Ellen, snatched the sonic screwdriver from her hand, whirled her around forcefully by the shoulder, and pressed the black device against her jugular vein. The orange-haired girl screamed in terror.

"Release me," the Doctor snarled at Mrs. Armstrong, "or I'll kill her."

----

To be continued


	18. Welcome to the TARDIS

Mrs. Armstrong gasped in terror, putting her fingers over her mouth. "Don't hurt her!" she pleaded with the angry Doctor. 

The warm metal feeling of the sonic screwdriver against her throat was enough to petrify Sue Ellen. _No way am I going through that again_, she thought. "You'd better do what he says," she advised her mother.

The cat woman stepped slowly away from the cell door, passing her hand over a sensor to make it slide open. Not sparing a second, the Doctor bolted into the outside corridor, forcing Sue Ellen to run along ahead of him. Impatient with the girl's short legs, he hastily scooped her up by the midsection and tossed her over his shoulder before continuing his flight to freedom.

_I know I parked the TARDIS somewhere in this area_, he thought while rushing down a hallway. _If circumstances were different, I'd simply ask for directions._ He knew that he had little time, as Sue Ellen's screams and protests would attract the attention of the Thrags. He ignored the pounding of the girl's fists on his back as he rounded a corner, coming face to face with the blue booth—and a Thrag soldier who had been placed to guard it.

"Stop!" exclaimed the helmeted soldier, reaching for the laser pistol on his belt. His long arm required more time to bend, however, so that by the time he aimed his weapon at the Doctor, his adversary had already switched on the sonic screwdriver. He squeezed the trigger, but his gun only made a faint popping sound and started to belch smoke.

Yet the Doctor wasn't finished. He pressed another of the little buttons, and a high-pitched, undulating sound filled the corridor. Within moments the Thrag guard's helmet spontaneously burst into a thousand glassy shards, which fell away and revealed the alien policeman's true appearance.

The Doctor grimaced. What he saw could only be described as a humanoid face that had been sliced evenly into cubes and reassembled in the wrong order. It was a visage that had obviously evolved into existence without respect for any principles of symmetry. There was hair, but it grew on the sides of his head instead of on the top, and resembled dangling porcupine quills more than anything else.

The Thrag seemed even more horrified than the Doctor over the fact that his face was exposed. Dropping his pistol and raising his hands to conceal his head, he pleaded, "Don't look at me! Please don't look at me!" His voice, freed from the distortion of the helmet, sounded uncannily like that of a human boy.

"Oh, don't be so self-conscious," said the Doctor in his usual detached manner.

The guard offered no resistance as he carried the reluctant Sue Ellen through the doors of the blue box. When her eyes beheld the amazing vista of the TARDIS interior, she entirely forgot what she was fighting against, and even who she was. "I-I don't believe it," she stammered as the Doctor gently set her on her feet.

"You don't have to believe it," said the Time Lord, manipulating the console controls, "as long as you stand still and don't touch anything."

Sue Ellen glanced around at the roundels in the walls, the Earth-style furnishings, and the plain white doors leading to untold locations. "You mean it's even _bigger_ than this?" she marveled.

"There's even a swimming pool," the Doctor told her, "if you're into that sort of thing."

"I _love_ swimming," said Sue Ellen, her tone becoming chipper. "Every morning at the aquatic center, April and I would…"

The girl's mouth fell open. "What did you say about April?" the Doctor pressed her.

Anger and defiance began to overwhelm Sue Ellen's wonder at her surroundings. "You'd better let me go," she warned the man in the brown jacket. "If you hurt me, you'll be in big trouble with my mom and dad."

The Doctor smirked condescendingly. "Your parents can't reach you here—it's just you, me, and the mechanized soul of the TARDIS. And rest assured, I have no intention of hurting you. I need you alive and unmolested, since you're going to testify before the Alliance Grand Council in regards to the conspiracy to overthrow the planet Earth."

Sue Ellen's face drooped as disturbing memories resurfaced in her mind. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I grew up on Earth. My friends live there. I like it there. I don't know why Mom and Dad and the other Yordilians want to invade Earth. Maybe there's a good reason."

"Let me tell you what will happen if your people conquer Earth," said the Doctor, stooping to eye level with the girl. "Your way of life will end. Your families will be broken up. Your men will have to share their love with Yordilian women. Their wives will become concubines."

Sue Ellen shrugged. "So? I've lived in countries where a man could have more than one wife."

"That's different," said the Doctor. "Those people are accustomed to such an arrangement. I'm talking about something much more insidious. Imagine a man, his wife, and their children gathered around the dinner table, when a strange woman suddenly walks into the house and tells the kids, 'You now have two mommies. Resistance is futile.' Now imagine that happening in _every_ home in America, in England, in all of Europe…"

Deep in thought, Sue Ellen rubbed her fuzzy chin. "I…I don't know…" she muttered.

"I understand," said the Doctor reassuringly. "It's difficult to choose between your adopted world and your true heritage. Take comfort in the fact that you no longer _have_ a choice. What's your name, by the way?"

"It's Sue Ellen," replied the cat girl with a faint smile.

"Those are two beautiful names," the Doctor remarked. "Welcome to the TARDIS, Sue Ellen. It's been lonely here since I lost Rose."

----

To be continued


	19. Breathless

After a half hour of walking, D.W., Vicita, and Arthur reached the edge of Elwood City's downtown business district and the beginning of the residential area. The girls were getting tired, and Arthur was getting tired of not seeing where they were leading him. 

"There's a run in my stocking," D.W. complained.

"I need to pee," said Vicita. "And I need to poop. And I think I need to throw up."

"Are we there yet?" whined D.W.

They trudged onward, their feet sore and the cold oppressive. One block of pastel-yellow houses gave way to another. Arthur murmured impatiently. "Do you girls even know if you're going the right way?" he chided them.

"Of course we are," said D.W. with assurance. "Greta _told_ me to go this way."

Arthur let out a sigh of disgust. "Greta is _dead_," he told his sister. "A dead person can't tell you which way is right."

"Look over there," said Vicita, pointing toward a humble brick steeple with a cross on the top. "It's a church. We can ask Jesus which way to go."

"Don't be silly, Vicita," said Arthur. "Jesus doesn't live there."

"Does too," insisted the Ecuadorian girl. "It's his house."

"Greta says we should turn right at the church," said D.W.

"We're not doing what Greta says anymore," said Arthur, stopping abruptly. "We're lost, and we need to find some grownups and ask them for directions."

"Greta's a grownup," said D.W. "She's 213 years old."

"She's 213 years _dead_," snapped Arthur. "Don't make me say _dead_ in italics again."

As they stood outside the small church, unsure of their next step, they witnessed an odd sight—a long-haired young man in a green flannel coat, who shuffled unsteadily towards them with his arms stretched out rigidly. "_Dios mio_," said Vicita. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Uuunghhh," they heard the stranger moan eerily.

"It's a zombie!" cried D.W. "Run!"

"Don't worry, kids," said the man quietly as he lurched past them. "I'm only _pretending_ to be a zombie so the _real_ zombies won't catch me and eat me."

Arthur shook his head in disbelief. "Just when I thought Elwood City couldn't get any weirder…"

"I…am…a…zombie," droned Vicita, sticking her arms forward. "Don't…eat…me."

"Knock it off," said Arthur sharply. "Zombies aren't real. They're make-believe, like Greta."

----

A new Elwood City tradition had arisen overnight—whenever a strange phenomenon occurred, people rushed to the Nordgren house to ask Jenny of the planet Kressida if she had an explanation. Francine and Jenna were en route to the place, eager to know the cause of the disturbance at the Ice Palace.

George and Sal were seated on either side of Jenny, watching a children's video entitled _Cooties in a Dentist's Office_. "Enough is enough!" bellowed the actor on the screen, who wore a protective mask over his nose and mouth. "I've had it with these dadgum cooties in this dadgum dentist's office!"

"I've seen that movie before," said Jenna as she entered the living room. "In a theatre, with a bunch of rowdy kids. It was a lot of fun."

"Hi, Jenna," said Sal, showing the cat girl an issue of the magazine _Junior Princess_. "I'm learning how to make myself look fabulous. Do you have any beauty tips you'd like to share?"

"Yeah," was Jenna's answer. "Don't be me."

Francine, in the meantime, pensively examined some new pictures hanging over the mantle—framed portraits of Muffy Crosswire in various attractive outfits. "I can see you really miss Muffy," she said to George.

"Uh-huh," said the moose boy glumly. "She was the best girlfriend I ever had."

"She was the _only_ girlfriend you ever had," said Francine.

"You didn't like her because of her money, did you?" Jenna asked George.

"No way," replied the boy, shaking his antlers. "She wasn't even rich when we got together. I liked her because…I dunno, I just liked her."

"Don't look at me that way," said Francine to Jenna, who was looking at her that way.

Sal flipped through the pages of her magazine (headline: "You're Never Too Young to Obsess Over Your Appearance"), until she saw a picture of a little Asian girl in a flowing taffeta gown. "You'd look _adorable_ in that," said Jenny, touching the photo with the tip of her long, rubbery finger.

"I don't _want_ to look adorable," said Sal. "I want to look sexy."

"You're still wearing the same outfit," observed Francine, doing her best not to stare at the Kressidan girl. "When are you going to buy some new clothes?"

"That may be a problem," replied Jenny. "Nothing in the stores matches my unique figure. What I need is a…"

Mrs. Nordgren suddenly charged into the room, shutting off the television with a quick movement. "Stop watching TV!" she warned the kids and the alien.

"What's the matter, Mom?" George asked her. "I've _finished_ my homework."

"The Soviet Russians have taken control of the networks," ranted the moose woman. "Now the TV watches _you!_"

"Soviet Russians?" said Jenny, confused. "You mean the Soviet Union's been restored? I had no idea my knowledge of Earth history was _that_ far out of date."

"You'll thank me for this," said Mrs. Nordgren. "And you'll thank me for removing the car radio—_another_ conduit for Communist surveillance of our activities."

"Mom, you're starting to scare me," said George. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Quiet!" snapped his mother. "They can hear you! The house plants are bugged!"

As Francine, Jenna, George, and Sal tried to discern the meaning of the woman's words, Jenny leaped to her feet and clutched her throat with both hands. "I…can't…breathe," she rasped.

"Are you okay?" asked Francine with concern.

Clearly Jenny was _not_ okay, as the next thing she did was collapse to the floor.

----

To be continued


	20. Bitter Tears

Jenny lay on her back, wheezing violently, her elbows bent in impossible directions. George, Sal, Francine, and Jenna stood around her and exchanged confused stares, unsure of what to do when faced with an extraterrestrial clinging to life. Mrs. Nordgren, oblivious to Jenny's plight, ran her fingers through the soil of a potted hydrangea in search of listening devices. 

"Somebody call 911!" cried Francine.

"I'm on it," said George. Bounding to the telephone, he rapidly punched the three familiar numbers and waited for a response. All that came out of the receiver was a busy signal. "Uh, I don't think this is supposed to happen," he remarked to the others.

"Try again," Francine instructed him.

"What good will it do?" Jenna wondered. "The doctors here don't know how to treat aliens." Jenny shot her an agonized, pleading expression from the floor.

"Still busy," George reported to his friends.

"Busy?" said Francine incredulously. "How can 911 be busy? Unless…"

A moment of silence went by as the four kids considered the possibilities.

"I know," Sal chimed in. "A big building's on fire, and everybody in the building is calling 911 at the same time."

"Could it have something to do with all the people going crazy at the Ice Palace?" Jenna theorized.

"Whatever it is, my mom's got it too," said George. "It's like contagious weirdness."

"The Communists are behind it all," said Mrs. Nordgren, brushing the dirt from her hands. "That, you can be sure of."

With great effort on the part of her lungs, Jenny managed to choke out a few unintelligible syllables. "Quiet, everyone," said Francine. "She's trying to say something."

The children held their breaths, hoping that Jenny would impart some helpful information. In a raspy, halting voice she uttered, "Communism…isn't…such…a…bad…political…system…in…theory."

----

In the dim illumination of the street lights, D.W. caught sight of a wooden sign standing in a lawn: WESTBORO APARTMENTS. "Look!" she exclaimed to Arthur and Vicita. "It's the building where Francine lives!"

"Where?" said Arthur, straining to focus his foggy vision. "I can't see it."

"You're right, D.W.," said Vicita with relief. "That means we're almost home!"

"You're just yanking my chain," said Arthur irritably. "We're nowhere _near_ Francine's place."

"You see, Arthur?" said D.W., dragging her brother along by the arm. "Greta showed us the way home. It's about time you started believing in her."

They arrived at the Read house in a matter of minutes, and the sound of Pal's joyful barking alerted Arthur to the fact that they had, seemingly miraculously, made it home. Their bellies growling, their legs tired beyond belief, they staggered through the front door and into the cluttered kitchen. D.W. and Vicita saw no one present except for Mrs. Read, who was hunched over on the couch, weeping bitterly.

"Mom!" cried D.W., pulling Arthur after her into the living room. "What's wrong?"

The aardvark woman sobbed and sniffled. Arthur, his hearing as acute as ever, asked his mother, "Why are you crying?"

Mrs. Read wiped her eyes with a piece of tissue. "I've seen the way your father looks at Paige Turner," she said miserably. "Why does he keep denying it?"

D.W. looked at Arthur. Arthur looked at Vicita, mistakenly believing she was D.W.

An angry moan issued from the guest bedroom. "It's Grandpa Dave!" said Arthur with alarm.

Even without his glasses, he knew the path to the guest room well. He, D.W., and Vicita found the oldster sprawled on a dingy sheet, his face covered with white stubble, wearing nothing but his absorbent briefs. "Thank goodness you're here," he grumbled. "You've got to take me away from this wretched place. They say I've got Alzheimer's disease. It's a lie. They're keeping me here so they can perform experiments on me. They've already replaced my spleen with one they took from a pig."

His suspicious words filled the hearts of the three children with dread. "I want to go home," said Vicita weakly.

"Okay," said Arthur. "We'll go to your place, but I'm betting we'll see the same thing there."

----

With a bit of exertion, George and Sal succeeded in lifting the helplessly infirm Jenny onto the couch. Her wheezing had subsided, but her white skin had turned yellow and moist. George even went so far as to remark, "She's covered with slimy stuff."

Jenny struggled to move her lips and force air through them. "Ice…ice…" she mumbled.

"She wants ice," said George urgently. "She must be burning up with a fever."

"Ice…_cream,_" the alien girl squeezed out.

"Ice cream?" repeated George in astonishment.

"I'll get her some," Sal offered. With the help of a kitchen chair, she obtained a few scoops of Rocky Road in a bowl and presented them to Jenny.

"You'll have to feed her," said George. "She doesn't have the strength."

"Okay," said Sal helpfully. Spoonful after spoonful, she stuffed the frozen confection through the skin flaps that made up the Kressidan girl's mouth.

After she had cleaned out the bowl with Sal's assistance, Jenny said simply, "M-more."

The moose girl shrugged. "We don't have any more. That was it."

"Piz…za," rasped Jenny.

In another room of the Nordgren house, Francine and Jenna were engaged in an earnest conversation. "There must be _something_ about Muffy you liked other than her money and her middle name," said Jenna.

"No, that was pretty much it," said Francine. "I was poor, I didn't have many friends, and most of my toys were homemade junk. When Muffy came along, I saw an opportunity. She was a show-off, she was dishonest, and she thought she was better than everybody else because she was rich, but I didn't care, because she let me play with her dolls and sleep on her waterbed."

"Yeah, I guess some of those things are true about her," Jenna mused. "But to me, it seemed like she really cared about you."

"The only person Muffy cares about is Muffy," Francine retorted. "I hoped she would change after losing her mansion and her limo, but what happened instead? She saw a chance to improve her fortunes by moving to another planet, and she took it. She didn't even say goodbye to me—she just _went_. Will we ever see each other again? No. Does she give a flying crap? No."

Jenna shook her head. "I don't know, Francine," was all she could say before turning and walking out of the room.

Francine waited until the cat girl was out of sight, and a bitter tear rolled down her cheek. _Stupid Muffy_, she thought. _How could you just leave me like that?_

_---- _

To be continued


	21. School's Out Forever

Jenna dialed her home number into George's telephone. She heard her father's voice on the line, but it wasn't the father she knew. "For the last time, I don't have the Maltese Falcon!" he barked. "Now stop calling me!" 

She lowered the receiver with a despondent sigh. _I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different_, she thought. "My parents have lost it as well," she told Francine, who was waiting for her turn on the phone.

A savory aroma greeted the noses of Arthur, D.W., and Vicita as they marched, uninvited, into the Nordgren home. "Mmm, someone's making pizza!" said D.W. with delight.

"Hi, Arthur," said George, who was changing the cold compress on Jenny's overheated forehead. "Where are your glasses?"

"Broken," replied the aardvark boy. "Thanks for asking, Binky."

"Let me guess," said Francine, hanging up. "Your mom and dad have gone off their rockers."

"That's about the size of it," said Arthur with a nod. To George he added, "Can I talk to Jenny?"

"I'm afraid she's dying at the moment," said the moose boy.

Arthur gaped. "_Dying?_"

"Or getting better," George went on. "I can't tell."

"She's got _alienitis_," Sal chimed in.

Vicita curiously looked over the ailing Kressidan girl. "After we moved here from Ecuador, the food made us really sick," she recounted. "We made up a name for it—Davy Crockett's Revenge. I think that's what Jenny's got."

"So you think she's reacting badly to Earth food?" said Francine with concern. On the couch, Jenny shook her head so vigorously that the compress fell to the floor.

"Goody," said D.W. eagerly. "More pizza for the rest of us." The alien girl groaned miserably.

The house became even _more_ crowded with the unexpected arrival of Alan and Fern. "Looks like everybody's got the same idea," Alan observed.

"How are _your_ folks doing?" Jenna inquired of them.

"Horribly," replied Fern. "My mom won't let us drink water from the tap because she thinks it's poisoned. She said something about 'precious bodily fluids'."

"We don't know what's causing it," said Alan, "unless it's some kind of Yordilian brain scrambling weapon."

"Either that," Fern added, "or there are more Brainchildren on the loose."

Alan sniffed the air. "You're having pizza?"

"_Jenny's_ having pizza," George told him. "She's sick, but she just keeps asking for more food."

"Interesting," said Fern, laying a finger on the alien girl's artichoke-like head to gauge her temperature. "Maybe the old saying about 'feeding a fever' really works on her planet."

Alan stepped over to the television, reaching for the power button. "Maybe the news will tell us something," he said.

"I repeat, we have lost contact with the White House," stated newscaster Wolf Blitzen. "From all accounts, the wave of delusional behavior has completely engulfed Washington D.C., and is spreading into nearby cities. The situation is similar in New York and many foreign cities, including London and Moscow."

"London!" exclaimed Jenna, arching her eyebrows. "That's where…"

She cut herself off abruptly. "That's where _what?_" said Francine.

"Er…ah…" Jenna stammered. "Er, that's where Beat's from."

"Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working on the assumption that a coordinated biological attack, perhaps engineered by terrorists, is the cause of the mass paranoia," Blitzen continued. "They have not ruled out the possibility of extraterrestrial…"

Mrs. Nordgren, who had been cowering quietly in a corner of the kitchen, charged into the living room and switched off the set. "I said, no TV!" she bellowed.

The moose woman strolled away, wringing her hands nervously. "What's _her_ problem?" Fern wondered.

"She thinks the Communists are spying on us," said George.

With the television off, there was nothing to break the ominous and uncomfortable silence—nothing but the singing of the crickets in the back yard.

"Think about it," Alan mused darkly. "All the grownups in the world infected by this weird plague. No one left but the children."

"And the crickets," Francine added.

"What will we do?" Alan worried. "How will we take care of ourselves?"

"You're right," said Fern anxiously. "We'll end up just like the boys in _Lord of the Flies_, only with girls."

"_I_ wanna be Lord of the Flies!" exclaimed Vicita.

"It's the Yordilians," said George boldly. "I'm sure of it. They're softening us up for a full-scale invasion."

"I hate to say it," said Francine, "but this time George is right."

Sal stared glumly at her knees. "No grownups," she lamented. "No doctors. No nurses. Jenny will die."

"No firemen," said D.W. "Our houses will all burn down."

"No religious leaders," said Fern. "We'll all go to hell."

"No David Beckham," said Francine.

"No opticians," said Arthur. "I'll never get new glasses."

"No teachers," said Alan. "No schools."

George and Sal gazed hopefully at the bear boy.

"That's _bad,_" Alan concluded.

"There's only one solution," declared Fern. "We need to elect a leader—someone all the other kids in Elwood City can look to for direction. Someone fearless. Someone smart."

All eyes turned to Alan, who only shrugged. "_I'm_ not fearless," he told them.

"Get real," said Francine bitterly. "He's smart, but he's not _that_ smart."

"It's hopeless," moaned Arthur. "Where do we find a kid who's smart enough to take care of hundreds and thousands of other kids?"

"Right here," uttered a weak female voice from the doorway.

George, Sal, Jenna, Francine, Arthur, D.W., and Vicita were surprised at the sight of Tommy and Timmy, and between them an emaciated bear girl in a hospital gown, bent over in a wheelchair. When Fern and Alan recognized her face, their eyes nearly burst out of their heads.

"_Tegan!_"

----

to be continued


	22. She's Back

By significant exertion of her withered arms, Tegan was able to move her wheelchair a few inches in the direction of the stupefied Alan and Fern. "I'm glad to see you two are still alive," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I was afraid Claire had killed you." 

"Y-you're out of your coma," Alan stammered in disbelief. "When? How?"

"Don't come any closer!" cried Fern, backing away in terror. "I haven't forgotten what you did to me!"

"What, Fern?" asked Jenna curiously. "What _did_ she do to you?"

"She changed my personality," said the poodle girl angrily. "She forced me to cooperate with Professor Frink and the Brainchildren. Greta _died_ because of her."

As his sister crept closer, Alan happened upon a realization. "Your powers," he said quietly.

"Gone," said Tegan. "Must have been the brain damage." The news reassured Fern, who let down her defensive posture.

"Well, _that's_ good news," said Alan. "You're not a Brainchild anymore. You can have a normal life."

"I'm confused," said Jenna, who apparently hadn't read _Arthur Goes Fifth V: The Brain Identity._

"Then I'll explain," offered Tegan.

"No, _I'll_ explain," said Alan. "I don't want you to strain your voice."

Jenna, Francine, George, Sal, Arthur, D.W., Vicita, Tommy, and Timmy stood around as he related the tale. "Tegan is my older sister. I didn't know she existed until two months ago, when my parents took me to meet her at a secret facility. She had telepathic powers, and could mind-merge with anyone who came close enough to her. After Fern was kidnapped, she merged with Raymond Mansch to find out if he was the culprit. She saved Fern, but she also saw things in Mansch's mind that she liked, so she ran away with him. She came back eventually and we locked her up again, but Mansch broke her out along with a few other Brainchildren, including C.V. Oberlin."

"The big fat kid with the glasses," D.W. recalled. "He was _scaaaary._"

"There's more," Alan went on. "I discovered that I had mental powers of my own—when I was merged with Tegan, I could erase other people's memories. The Brainchildren wanted me to join them, and they wouldn't take no for an answer, so I had to run away."

"That's why Tegan put a copy of her own personality in my head," said Fern, "so I'd help them track him down."

"I ended up in Springfield," Alan continued. "Lisa Simpson introduced me to her friend, Professor Frink. I didn't know it, but he had taken over as leader of the Brainchildren after Mansch had…had, uh, become indisposed. He was working on a special helmet that would make any one of the Brainchildren a thousand times more powerful. He planned for Tegan to use it to get into the minds of the people of Springfield, and make them want to free the rest of the Brainchildren. But instead it ended up in the hands of Claire, who was a telekinetic."

"She killed Greta with it," Fern lamented. "And she put Tegan in a coma."

"She did more than that," Francine chimed in. "She blew up a building using just her thoughts."

"And then she created a tornado," added D.W., "and tried to suck us up."

"I've been meaning to ask," rasped Tegan, swiveling her chair to face Fern, "did she kill anybody else besides your unicorn friend?"

"Some of the people in the building died," Fern answered. "Lisa Simpson and Professor Frink made it out all right. The Brainchildren were all caught by the police."

"But enough about that," said Alan, smiling. "Tell us how you got here, Tegan."

"We pushed her," said Tommy proudly.

"I pushed harder," claimed Timmy.

"No, you didn't," said Tommy.

"We woke up from a long nap at the hospital," Timmy told the group. "All the grownups were acting funny, and we couldn't find our mom, so we just started wandering around and having fun."

"_Code blue! Code blue!" Tommy repeatedly shouted into the PA microphone._

"Even the sick people were saying weird things."

"_I'm a bionic man," mumbled the groggy recipient of a hip transplant. "I can stop bullets with my chest. I can fly!"_

"When we got to Tegan's room, she asked us to help her into a wheelchair," said Tommy.

"_Pulling the needle out doesn't hurt," whispered Tegan, "at least not as much as taking off the tape."_

"She wasn't crazy, so we helped her."

"_I need you to push me to Alan's house," said Tegan, hardly able to sit up in the chair. "I have to find out if he's still alive."_

"There was a girl about my age in one of the rooms," Tegan related. "She was screaming that vampires had brought her to the hospital to drain out all her blood. If the delusions only affect kids over a certain age, then I can't explain why she would get them and not me."

"Weird," mused Alan. "Maybe it's because your brain is different."

"As the twins were pushing me down the street, I saw you going into George's house, so I followed you," said Tegan. Glancing at the sick Kressidan girl on the couch, she added, "I notice you're hiding aliens here."

"That's Jenny," said Sal warmly.

Tegan rolled over for a closer examination. "She looks like I feel," she remarked.

"You must be hungry," said Alan to his weakened sister. "George is making pizza."

"_Was_ making pizza," called the moose boy from the kitchen. "It burned."

"Thanks for offering," said Tegan, "but I've been dining intravenously for weeks, and pizza could kill me."

Jenny managed to wrench her lips into a smile. "Hel…lo," she whispered.

"There must be other kids at the hospital who need help," said Fern with urgency.

"Of course there are," said Arthur. "And there are about a million kids at the Ice Palace who need help, too."

"But what can _we_ do?" Jenna wondered.

At that moment Vicita raised her arms and let out a mighty yawn.

"I'm with Vicita," said D.W. "Let's all go to bed." The other kids nodded in agreement.

"Well, good night, everybody," said Francine, moving towards the door. "I hope we'll still have a world in the morning."

"Wait!" said Alan, gesturing for her to stop. "We should stick together. Safety in numbers, and all that."

"Alan's right," said Fern. "Without parents to keep them in line, bullies will roam the streets unchecked."

Francine scowled fearfully. "Okay," she said. "I'll just crash here."

"So will I," said Jenna. "But I need to pick up something from my house." Turning to George, who was bringing in a scorched crust on a plate, she asked, "You won't mind having a dog in your house, will you?"

"A dog?" said the boy, surprised.

"When did you get a dog, Jenna?" Francine wanted to know.

"Oh, she's not _my_ dog," said the cat girl. "She's Buster's."

"You mean Amazon Puppy?" said Arthur. "How'd she end up with you?"

"I found her on the street shortly after Buster left with his family," Jenna replied. "She warmed right up to me."

"Hmm," said Fern, resting her chin on her knuckles. "Buster's puppy abandoned. Another clue."

With Jenna on her way out, Alan began to address the other children. "I don't want to alarm you," he said ominously, "but we've got a much bigger problem than just bullies."

"What's that?" D.W. asked him.

"Think for a minute," the bear boy continued. "The Yordilians targeted Washington D.C. They targeted New York, London, Moscow. That makes sense…but why would they also target Elwood City?"

He was met with blank stares.

"Omigosh, Alan," said Fern with sudden anxiety. "You're right _again._"

"What is it? What?" said Francine.

"Petula," said Alan seriously. "The Yordilians know Buster has her. They know we're Buster's friends. When they land in Elwood City, the first thing they'll do is come looking for _us_. And there'll be no one—no parents, no teachers, no cops—to protect us from them."

----

To be continued


	23. Is That Your Final Answer?

The kids bedded down at George's house that night, heedful of Alan's warning and concerned for the ailing Jenny. Even Amazon Puppy curled up to sleep, having found a prime spot on the Kressidan girl's warm belly. George's parents occupied themselves by shambling up and down the sidewalk, Mrs. Nordgren muttering about Communists, and her husband ranting about radioactive tailings in the foundation of his house. Arthur, D.W., Francine, Tegan, and the others tried their best to dream peacefully, but the plaintive cries of lost children on the street haunted them. 

In a faraway land, Buster and Beat wandered the moving walkways of Heathrow Airport, looking for sources of food that were open in the early hours. They eventually discovered an all-night coffee shop that had been abandoned, leaving pastries and assorted snacks undefended.

"I guess this is stealing," said Buster, munching on a danish. "But someone's gonna steal it sooner or later, so it might as well be us."

"There are no bobbies around," said Beat as she filled her mouth with roasted almonds. "There's hardly anyone around, except for a few kids. It's so spooky—yet at the same time, it's indescribably romantic."

_Romantic_, thought Buster anxiously. _That's girl speak for 'I want to kiss the boy I'm speaking to'. And she's speaking to me!_

"Think of it, Buster," said Beat wistfully. "If this disaster wipes out the rest of humanity, leaving only the two of us, we'll have no choice but to, you know, make babies together."

Buster bit his lip. _Oh, geez…she's giving me that doe-eyed look!_

The rabbit-aardvark girl turned her face away and giggled. "I'm being a silly goose, of course. That's extremely, _extremely_ unlikely to happen."

_You bet it is_, thought Buster, taking another bite of pastry.

"After all," Beat went on, "why should we two be the only survivors of humanity? If we were holed up in an underground bunker with provisions to last years, that'd be another story, but here we are at an international airport. We'll be among the first to go."

"And besides, I don't _want_ to make babies with you," Buster blurted out.

Beat responded with a hurt expression. Seconds later her eyes began to tear up.

_Girls_, thought Buster peevishly.

"Dear me, I'm getting moody again," said Beat, struggling to rein in her emotions. "My mum warned me there'd be days when everything would make me cry."

"I'm sorry for what I said," was Buster's somewhat insincere apology. "It's because I read this book about sex changes…I mean, this book about sex and the changes that happen to girls, and it really scared me."

"Hmph," Beat grunted as she wiped some moisture from her eye with a handkerchief. "It scared _me_ when I learned about it," she admitted. "And now I'm living it."

"What's it like?" Buster asked her.

"Well," said the British girl sheepishly, "there are times when I feel like I'm bursting with life, and there are times when I just want to keel over dead." She shook her head weakly. "And there are times when I wish I'd stayed in Dudley's body, so I wouldn't have to deal with this."

While Buster reflected on her words, two visitors approached from the wide airport corridor—a little aardvark boy, accompanied by a friendly-looking Golden Retriever wearing a full-body harness. "You stealin' my food, then?" said the lad in a thick accent. "I could have you arrested, I could."

"Arrested?" said Beat incredulously. "By whom?"

"By me," said the boy, pointing at the shiny badge pinned to his cardigan sweater. "I filched it from a copper, I did. Now _I_ have the power to make arrests."

The dog, meanwhile, found Buster to be an irresistible attraction. The rabbit boy chuckled with delight as a rough, moist tongue lapped at his cheeks and nose.

"Is that your dog?" Beat asked the English youth.

"No, he ain't," he replied. "He's been followin' me everywhere, though. He's a seein' eye dog, he is."

"Hmm," Beat pondered. "His owner must have gone nutters like all the rest."

"My parents ran away and left me, they did," the boy related. "They said I was full o' the devil."

"I have a dog," said Buster, who was busy frolicking with his new golden friend. "Her name's Amazon Puppy."

"Queer name, that," remarked the youth. "Where's your dog now?"

"She's with a friend," Buster replied. _At least I hope so_, he thought. _She was tied up in the yard when the Doctor took us away._

"What's _your_ name, young man?" Beat inquired of him.

"Roland," he answered, putting out his hand. "'Tis a pleasure to meet you, m'lady."

"You're so polite," said Beat as she shook hands with the boy. "As long as we're here, you're welcome to, as the Americans say, _hang_ with us."

----

The air was tense as Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r consulted with the Armstrongs in the control center of the Thrag space station. "The Doctor has escaped," stated the helmeted officer. "It appears he took Sue Ellen along for the ride."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong in horror.

"Any idea where he's gone?" said Mr. Armstrong urgently.

"None at all," replied T'l'p'g'r. "Judging from the level of technology in his blue booth, he could be anywhere in the universe."

"My poor little girl," the cat woman lamented. "He's already killed April."

"We have no firm evidence of that," said her husband. "In my opinion, he's more concerned with exposing the Alliance's complicity with the Yordilians than with harming girls."

Taking long strides, the lieutenant walked to a video console and switched on the image of a lonely highway at night—the perspective of the lost, frightened Prunella. "My friends in the Grand Council warned me that the Doctor was not to be underestimated," he told the Armstrongs. "He may yet convince the Council to investigate the Yordilian presence on Earth. Before it comes to that, we must eliminate anything in the possession of the Yordilians, or anything they have the _potential_ of possessing, that the Council can trace back to us."

A worried look spread over the cat man's face. "You don't mean…"

T'l'p'g'r nodded his helmet. "We've put it off far too long," he said coldly. "Prunella must be dealt with."

Prunella herself had much to deal with—separated from her mother, abandoned on a strange road, with no mode of transportation but her worn feet. _These buckle shoes weren't made for walking_, she thought, fighting to will her legs to move. _I don't know how much further the town is. I don't know if there'll be anybody who can help me. I think I'm gonna die here._ The rawhide soles scraped mercilessly against the skin of her heels.

Nothing but bare highway and forest presented itself to the forlorn rat girl. Then, to her astonishment, the sky above the horizon began to shimmer, apparently filling up with millions of densely packed stars. _What the heck?_ she marveled. _Now I must be going crazy too!_

The blobs of celestial light coalesced, forming into a round head and ears with pointed tips. It was the face of Hank Armstrong, gazing down at her from the atmosphere. "Hello, Prunella," he uttered in a peaceful voice.

The rat girl gasped in terror, certain her world was about to be ripped apart. "Go away!" she wailed, closing her eyes tightly.

"Don't be afraid," the voice came again. "It's only a holographic projection, beamed into the microchip in your brain. I want to help you. You do want to be helped, don't you?"

She only grumbled petulantly. A cold breeze flailed against her jacket.

"You're all alone, hungry and cold," said the patronizing cat man. "Your parents, like all the other grownups, have lost their minds. It's a sad, dangerous world for a little girl. But I can take you away from it all."

"No!" Prunella cried out. "Leave me alone! You've done enough damage!"

The face in the sky smirked. "Let me tell you what will happen if you stay where you are. The Yordilians will capture you. They'll extract the chip from your head, study it, unlock its secrets, and implant an identical chip in the brain of every Earthling. Humanity will become a robotized slave race. Do you want that?"

"No!" screamed the rat girl.

"Then allow us to transport you to our location," Mr. Armstrong offered. "You'll be safe. You'll be cared for."

Prunella raised her fists against the man's shimmering image. "I want nothing to do with you," she said firmly. "Earth's my home, and I'm staying here."

"Is that your _final_ answer?" Mr. Armstrong asked calmly.

The simple phrase struck fear into her heart. _I know I can't trust him, but what if he's really telling the truth?_

On the Thrag station, the cat man and T'l'p'g'r faced each other grimly in front of the video display. Gesturing at a control panel, the lieutenant said, "You understand that if she refuses again, I will push the microchip destruct button, and her brain will explode. Do you have any objections?"

Mr. Armstrong's steely face showed no reaction.

----

To be continued


	24. Schroedinger's Rat

The Doctor was a one-man hive of activity, frantically twisting knobs and adjusting dials on the TARDIS console. "If I can manage to unscramble and record this transmission," he explained to the bemused Sue Ellen, "I may have enough evidence to convince the Grand Council of the conspiracy against Earth." 

"If you do convince them," the cat girl asked him, "what'll happen to my mom and dad?"

"Nothing worse than what will happen to Earth if I _don't_," the Doctor assured her.

A panel gave way on the sloping wall of the TARDIS chamber, uncovering a large, flat video screen. The Doctor watched with breathless anticipation as a fuzzy image materialized, accompanied by a faint, static-filled voice. Sue Ellen instantly recognized the outline of a round, disembodied head: "It's Dad!"

"Indeed," said the Doctor, flipping a final lever to bring the picture and sound into focus. "Let's hear what he has to say, shall we?"

With remarkable clarity the cat man uttered, "…Yordilians will capture you. They'll extract the chip from your head, study it, unlock its secrets, and implant an identical chip in the brain of every Earthling. Humanity will become a robotized slave race. Do you want…"

The transmission wavered, snow garbling Mr. Armstrong's face and voice. "What did he say at the end?" Sue Ellen wondered.

"I'm not sure," said the Doctor. "It sounded rather like, 'Do you want chips with that?'"

At the receiving end of the signal, at the side of a highway in rural Minnesota, Prunella glared defiantly at the ghostly face in the sky. "You're a Yordilian," she said accusingly. "You want to steal the chip from my brain as much as Gadfly does."

"I've made an agreement with the Alliance to refrain from seeking the chip technology," Mr. Armstrong told her. "So has Gadfly. However, a time will soon come when the Alliance will have to cut off contact with the Yordilians on Earth, and we'll have no way to compel Gadfly to live up to her bargain."

"I don't see why I should believe a word you say," said Prunella. "I'm staying on Earth, and that's my final answer."

Sue Ellen heard the words _final answer_ as they reverberated softly through the dome-shaped chamber. "That…that sounds like Prunella," she marveled.

At the transmitting end of the signal, in the Thrag space station, T'l'p'g'r cast a brief questioning glance at Mr. Armstrong before pressing the tips of his fingers to the destruct button. The cat man glumly nodded his consent.

The lieutenant pushed the button.

The image of the darkened highway flickered and vanished from the view screen.

Mr. Armstrong let a second of reverential silence pass. "She was such a nice girl," he remarked.

The Doctor also noticed the abrupt termination of the signal. "Damn," he grumbled as a blank video screen mocked him.

"What does it mean, Doctor?" asked Sue Ellen earnestly. "Is Prunella in danger?"

"I wish I knew," replied the exasperated Time Lord. "But you heard what your father said—the Yordilians are plotting to robotize the human race."

"Well, yeah," said the girl, "but…"

"No more yeahbuts," said the Doctor, kneeling to confront her eye-to-eye. "Will you help me stop them? Do you care at all about Earth?"

"Yeah, I do," Sue Ellen admitted. "But…but I don't trust you. You…you killed…"

"_Who_ did I kill?"

The tears seemed to burst out of nowhere. "You killed April," the cat girl sobbed. "I remember her now. How could I forget her?"

"That's easy to answer," said the Doctor, using a handkerchief with a question-mark monogram to wipe her eyes. "Her death was so horrifying that your brain refused to acknowledge it had happened. It blocked out your memories of her, so you started to believe that it was _you_ who had died."

"W-why did you kill April?" the weeping girl demanded.

"I didn't kill her," was the Doctor's response. "_Time_ killed her. I'm no more responsible for her death than an engineer is responsible for someone who steps into the path of a moving train. Can you grasp that?"

The only thing Sue Ellen grasped was the Doctor's handkerchief as she blew into it with her nose.

Meanwhile, T'l'p'g'r came to a startling realization while studying the readout on his console's screen. "Wait," he motioned to Mr. Armstrong. "It says here that the computer automatically aborted the transmission to Earth after detecting an attempt to intercept and descramble it."

"Intercept? Descramble?" repeated the cat man curiously. His expression turned into a grim scowl. "The Doctor!"

"The abort took place just as I sent the destruct signal," said the Thrag lieutenant. "I can't tell if the signal got through."

"Then there's no way to tell if the chip was destroyed," said Mr. Armstrong with concern. "No way to tell if Prunella is alive or dead."

"No way," T'l'p'g'r agreed, "but to go to Earth and _look_ at her. But as long as the Doctor's free to eavesdrop on us, that's not an option."

----

To be continued


	25. All Your Men Are Belong to Us

They came at her from every direction—lurching humanoids with outstretched arms, wearing what appeared to be pale yellow radiation suits. She clutched Petula to her bosom and cried for help, but her voice, rather than echoing through the twilight forest as she expected, simply died out. Their visors were darkened, and she was unable to make out their faces. Their chilling moans, however, were perfectly understandable: 

"Waaaakeee…uuuupp….Biiiitzziii…"

She screamed with fright as the strangers in hazard suits mobbed her, their uncouth arms grabbing for the baby she held. Summoning an ounce of courage, she swiped at one of the creatures and managed to knock off the veil over its head. To her astonishment, she was glaring at the face of…

"Desirée?"

The woman from Torchwood smiled. "Good morning, Bitzi," she said gently.

The rabbit woman drowsily reached for her horn-rimmed glasses as her hostess bent over to retrieve the fallen helmet. Bitzi, having regained her sight, glanced around the now-lit bedroom. Petula was sleeping silently in the crib. Desirée was snapping her full-body environmental suit back together. Harry was missing from the other side of the bed.

"What's with the space suit?" she inquired, sitting up. "And where's Harry?"

"I don't know where Harry is," replied Desirée, her voice now transmitted through an electronic speaker below her visor. "Beat and Buster are gone too. They must have left during the night."

Bitzi felt her heart shrink to the size of an apricot pit. _They've abandoned me_, she told herself.

Desirée tossed another suit onto the mattress, one that came complete with oxygen tanks attached to the back. "Put this on," she ordered.

_Don't panic_, thought Bitzi, resisting the tears that threatened to come. _They wouldn't leave me here…in the middle of London…would they?_

"Put it on," said Desirée, this time more firmly. "We have reason to believe that the city is under attack by an alien biological weapon."

"Petula," said Bitzi, her voice cracking. "Will she be all right?"

"She'll be confined to an environmental chamber," Desirée told her. "Now put on the suit. There's no time."

----

Not far from London, Buster and his newfound friend Roland watched the first rays of dawn appear over the horizon. The British aardvark boy idly picked up a newspaper that had been discarded on the airport floor. He scanned the headline and grunted thoughtfully. "_Iran Offers to Support Lebanon Cease-fire._ Bloody dull, that. It should say, _World Ends Tomorrow._"

"For me, it's already ended," said Buster, gazing dolefully at the blank screens suspended from the ceiling. "There's no more TV."

"Nothin' left to do but read books," Roland observed. "This is the day the schools have been preparin' us for, it is."

The plexiglass windows quivered slightly as a faint rumbling sound reached Buster's ears. "Cool," he remarked. "Fireworks. I guess we won the war against the aliens." The distant boom was followed by another, then yet another.

Beat scurried up to the boys, her face pale with fright. "Take cover!" she bellowed, waving her arms frantically.

"What's all this, then?" Roland asked her.

The girl only pointed. Buster and Roland followed her trembling finger to a faraway grassy hill, over which soared a formation of fluorescent, lime-green objects. Another group consisting of more than a dozen flyers was passing above the center of London. Their speed was unbelievable, and Buster thought he could pick up the unearthly whine of high-pitched jet engines. More explosions were heard, these somewhat louder than the first, and preceded by small bursts of light.

"Bloody 'ell," muttered Roland. "It can't be."

"Can't be _what?_" said Buster curiously.

Beat let out an ear-splitting shriek. "It's an air raid, you silly goose! _We're being bombed!_"

----

After a night of restless slumber on one of George's sleeping bags, Francine awoke to find that the world, or at least the room, was still as she remembered it. Her first impulse was to find a snack, and she followed it, tiptoeing stealthily to avoid waking the kids who crowded the floor. On her way to the kitchen she beheld a sight that made her gasp in horror. Jenny's position on the couch hadn't changed, but now her face and hands were grotesquely swollen, and a wet, mucoid substance coated her skin. Worse yet, the alien girl's chest showed no sign of heaving up and down. For Francine, mere suspicion was enough; she wasn't brave enough to put her fingers on Jenny's slimy neck to check for a pulse.

"Omigosh!" she blurted out. "Wake up, everybody! _Jenny's dead!_"

Arthur, D.W., Vicita, Tommy, Timmy, Jenna, Alan, and Fern all shot up from the bags, blankets, or bare carpet on which they had been sleeping. Tegan, reclining in the wheelchair, raised her head.

"Dead?" said Alan, startled. "How can you tell?"

"She's not breathing," said Francine. "See for yourself."

All the kids turned their gaze to the motionless Kressidan girl. "Somebody check her pulse," Fern recommended.

"_I'm_ not gonna do it," said Jenna. "I don't want to get that icky gunk on _my_ fingers."

"I'll do it!" Tommy offered.

"No, _I'll_ do it!" Timmy countered.

"What's a pulse?" they asked together.

"I'll do it," said Tegan, her voice fuller than before, yet still weak. "I'm the oldest."

With some exertion she wheeled her chair to Jenny's side, and rested her bony fingers against the narrow part of Jenny that attached her head to her torso. Seconds passed as the other kids waited expectantly. At last Tegan declared, "It's not much, but it's there. She's still alive."

"Hooray!" D.W. exulted.

"She looks like a bee stung her in the face," Vicita remarked.

George and Sal, clad in their pajamas, hurried into the living room to examine the alien. "It's some kind of weird reaction," said George.

"I hope she doesn't blow up," Sal added.

Jenny remained bloated and unresponsive as the kids deliberated uselessly. Finally giving up in their search for a way to help her, they applied their attention to their growling stomachs. "What have you got to eat?" Arthur asked the moose boy.

"Um…eggs, milk, pancake mix, baking soda, oatmeal, onions, and a bottle of something called Zinfandel," was George's reply.

"Okay," said Arthur thoughtfully. "Do you know how to make pancakes?"

"I tried to make a pancake once," George told him.

"He flipped it, and it landed in my hair," said his little sister.

"My dad showed me how to make them," said Arthur, "but that was when I had my glasses."

"Excuse me," said Tegan, raising her strained voice as far as she could. "I just came out of a coma. I can't handle solid food."

A round of volunteering followed, and Fern and Alan went off to the corner drugstore on a quest for liquid nutritional supplements. "I can't believe we're trusting Tegan," said Fern darkly. "Even in a wheelchair, she's still dangerous."

"She can't do anything to us with her powers gone," said Alan.

"Yeah," said Fern, "but what if the other Brainchildren are loose? If all the guards have gone crazy, there's nothing to stop them from breaking out."

"Don't worry," said Alan. To emphasize his words, he tenderly wrapped his fingers around the poodle girl's hand.

"Oh, Alan," Fern giggled. "You read my mind."

They walked along, hand in hand, doing their best to ignore the scenes of forlorn children and crazed grownups on both sides of the street.

It wasn't easy. "This is what you get for not listening to Pat Robertson!" a woman screamed at them.

"Jim Emerson is keeping Roger Ebert sick so he can publish his _own_ reviews!" a man yelled. "Spread the word!"

It was a four-block trip to the local Greenwall's pharmacy, where Alan and Fern were surprised to happen upon rich girl Mickie Chanel and her foster brother, Zeke England. The two were arguing at the drugstore entrance as an occasional child walked in, picked up a candy bar or bag of chips, and walked out without paying.

"You can't be serious!" Mickie snapped at the Pomeranian boy. "I'm not leaving money on the counter where anybody who sees it can grab it."

"But taking something that's not yours is stealing," Zeke told the aardvark girl. "And God says stealing is wrong."

"If you love God so much," said Mickie, "then why don't you marry him?"

"Because God says same-sex marriages are wrong," said Zeke flatly.

A minute later, as Fern and Alan emerged from the pharmacy bearing several cans of Ensure in their arms, they saw that Mickie and Zeke were still at it. "Look around you, Ezekiel," said Mickie earnestly. "The whole town's one big madhouse. There's no one to cook our meals for us. There's no one to _serve_ our meals to us. How do you expect to survive, unless you take what you can find?"

"My folks taught me how to dig for truffles in the woods," said Zeke.

"What are you, crazy?" said Mickie. "You don't find truffles in the woods, you find them at the chocolatier's."

The return trip went by quickly, Fern and Alan exchanging affectionate glances now and then as they walked. Upon stepping through the doorway into George's house, they immediately dropped the cans they were carrying…and put up their hands.

The kids and Jenny were still there, but had been joined by no fewer than six cat women, each wearing a uniform with red and green stripes and toting what looked like a platinum-coated shotgun. They stood at each corner of the living room as if occupying strategic positions, except for one, who had holstered her weapon and was sitting contentedly in the lap of the oblivious Mr. Nordgren.

"Th-they're here," Alan stammered fearfully. "They took us by surprise."

"That's not fair!" Fern protested. "We didn't have a chance to prepare ourselves!"

One of the cat women strolled toward them, and Alan recognized her as the would-be murderer of Bitzi's adopted baby. "There's nothing you could have done," she told them in a menacingly silky voice. "We've been watching you from the beginning."

"What do you want?" demanded Alan, his arms still elevated.

"Your planet," the cat woman replied. "Your men. And a small nugget of information you're keeping locked up in that crafty little brain of yours." She pointed the barrel of her shotgun directly at Alan's nose and inquired, "Where is Petula Winslow?"

----

to be continued


	26. Canis Mortus Est

Sweat began to gush from Alan's pores. Crafty as his little brain was, the sight of an alien gun only inches from his face left him unable to formulate a plan, or even speak. The weapon was sleek and angular, its short barrel shaped like a square with rounded corners, its handle long and curved like a joystick, with indentations for the fingers. He had once seen George design a similar firearm with pencil and paper. 

"Where is she?" the cat woman repeated menacingly. The alternating red and green on her jumpsuit-like uniform caused Alan to suppose that it was patterned after a Yordilian patriotic banner.

"I…don't know where she is," he said anxiously, his arms growing tired.

The intruder smirked. With a graceful swing of her arm, she repositioned her gun so that the barrel projected a line directly between Fern's eyes. "How about now?" she said to Alan. "Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?"

Panic welled up in Alan's heart. "I _don't know_ where Petula is," he insisted. "Please don't hurt Fern."

Seconds passed as the other kids fixed their gaze on the poodle girl and silently begged for her safety. Amazon Puppy walked clumsily up to the cat woman's leg, sniffed it, and began to growl.

The armed Yordilian lowered her firearm and straightened her legs. Turning to the other children, she stated, "I don't wish to be cold-hearted, but I've got a job to do, and I'm losing patience. One of you knows the whereabouts of Petula Winslow, and unless you come forward, you'll have the pleasure of watching your friends die, one by one."

Fern and Alan slowly brought their arms down. Not one of the Earth children in the room dared move a muscle. The Yordilian soldier waved her gun as she stepped carefully among them, as if seeking a candidate.

In the meantime, the cat woman seated in Mr. Nordgren's lap cooed seductively and ran her fingers over the man's wide antlers. "Your wife is one lucky lady," she gushed. "I hope she doesn't mind sharing you."

"That's just sick," Alan couldn't help but say.

"Get used to it, brat," said the seductress without turning to look at him.

"Mr. Nordgren, how can you let her do this to you?" said Fern earnestly.

"I have to," said the moose man, his expression suggesting that he wasn't fully present. "She's the only woman who isn't contaminated by the radioactive waste in the ground."

The woman with the gun stopped with her legs spread out, glaring balefully at Vicita. As she brought her weapon to bear on the frightened South American girl, the fearless puppy lunged at her ankle and tried to sink her teeth into the boot that made up part of the uniform. The Yordilian, with nothing more than an irritated sigh, pointed her gun at the little dog and squeezed the trigger.

The faint whooshing sound of the gun was drowned out by the kids' gasps of horror and outrage. To them it appeared that an invisible punch had knocked Amazon Puppy onto her side. The animal whined a bit, paddled with her front paws, and froze in place. Blood seeped from the tiny hole in her ribcage, staining her yellow fur.

D.W. burst into horrified sobs. "You killed Buster's doggie!" she wailed.

Through tear-drenched eyes she saw the dark recesses of a gun barrel. "So that was Buster's dog," said the Yordilian warrior sternly. "If you know so much about Buster, perhaps you can tell me where he is. Or, perhaps, you'd like to be the next to die."

"Leave my sister alone!" Arthur snapped at the woman he could barely see.

The Yordilian shot him a dismissive glance. "I'd kill you," she said, "but boys are valuable." Reaching downward, she seized D.W.'s arm so tightly that the blood stopped flowing, and roughly yanked her into a standing position. "Do you know how to count to five?" she asked the wriggling aardvark girl. "Let's count to five together. One. Two…"

"Let her go!" pleaded Tegan at the top of her weakened lungs. "Kill me instead!"

"Three," said the cat woman, pressing the gun barrel to D.W.'s temple.

"Don't do this!" exclaimed George. "None of us knows where Buster and his family went! They just disappeared and left their puppy behind!"

"Four."

Jenna leaped to her feet. "Stop!" she shouted. "_I_ know where they are!"

----

To be continued


	27. London Bridge is Falling Down

In another neighborhood, the paraplegic Shih Tzu who called himself The Professor felt a disturbing chill in his mind and heart. _An innocent puppy has been mercilessly slaughtered,_ he realized. _This dastardly act will not go unpunished…_

D.W., meanwhile, dolefully rubbed the red finger marks the Yordilian soldier had left on her arm. Said soldier was now glaring at Jenna, awaiting a justification of her astonishing claim.

"I'll tell you where Petula is," said the thin-haired cat girl, "but only on one condition—you must save Jenny's life."

The confused, frightened children turned their eyes to her, hoping desperately that she had a plan. _I've gotta come up with a plan_, she thought.

"Save Jenny's life," the armed cat woman repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Isn't it obvious?" said Jenna to her friends and the Yordilians. "Jenny has the same disease the grownups have, but it affects her differently because she's an alien."

The kids murmured in astonishment. "Of course," said Alan. "I, of all people, should've thought of that."

Jenna took halting steps in the cat woman's direction. "You unleashed this plague," she said boldly, "so you must have a cure for it. Give Jenny the cure, and then I'll tell you what you want to know."

The woman rubbed her chin with the handle of her firearm. "All right," she agreed. "But if this is some kind of trick, I'll kill all the girls in the room, and save _you_ for last."

Francine, Fern, D.W., Sal, Vicita, and Tegan gritted their teeth in horror.

"Stellara," said the Yordilian, motioning toward one of her comrades, "administer the vaccine to the alien." The other cat woman obeyed, zipping open the white leather pack she held and withdrawing a syringe. The children watched in fascination, momentarily forgetting the imminent danger to their lives, as the woman carefully inserted the needle into Jenny's double-jointed elbow. Seconds later she pulled out the injection and sealed it inside her medical pack, not bothering to patch the bleeding hole in Jenny's skin.

"Now, then," said the soldier to Jenna, "where were we?"

The cat girl glanced over at Jenny, who lay still on the couch and showed no improvement. "It's not working," she said anxiously.

"It takes time," the Yordilian explained. "I'm not waiting, and neither are you. I ask again, where is Petula?"

Jenna cleared her throat and looked around at her friends, as if seeking their forgiveness. "Petula is in London," she revealed.

"How do you know that?" George blurted out, but Jenna disregarded him.

"London, eh?" said the cat woman, intrigued. "How convenient. Our air squadrons are destroying military targets there even as we speak. But London's a very big place—can you be more specific about Petula's location?"

Jenna started to wring her hands. "She's at a place called Torchwood," she went on. "I don't know exactly where it is, except that it's in London."

"Torchwood?" the kids were heard whispering to each other.

Jenna began to address them. "Buster's family was taken away by a man called the Doctor," she related. "I met him once, when my class went on a field trip and was accidentally transported to another dimension. He's a good man, and he cares a lot about Earth, even though he's from space. He has a vehicle called the TARDIS that can fly from here to London in only a few seconds. After he dropped off Buster's family at Torchwood, he came back and left Amazon Puppy in my care. I lied about finding her on the street." She looked down at the tragically deceased dog, and a tear formed in her eye.

During the course of Jenna's story, the Yordilian had holstered her gun and retrieved a small communication device from her belt. "General, this is Colossia," she spoke into the receiver. "I've received intelligence that Petula is in London, England." She paused. "Sorry, sir, that's all I've got." She paused again. "Exactly what I would recommend, sir. As soon as I narrow down her location further, I'll contact you. Colossia out."

Behind her, Jenny abruptly drew in a long breath. George and Sal rushed to her side, exclaiming with relief, "She's getting better!"

Jenna was met with a condescending grin from Colossia. "What happens now?" she inquired.

"Nothing," replied the Yordilian. "Nothing happens to _you_, anyway. You and your little friends are free to go and get into whatever trouble you see fit." Hearing her words, the other cat women stowed their firearms. "For the people of London, however, it's a very different story."

"What do you mean?" Jenna asked her.

Colossia cast a sidewards glance at Alan. "Ask your brainy friend what I mean," she said.

Alan and Fern looked at each other, and the answer occurred to them simultaneously.

"No, you _wouldn't!_" exclaimed Fern.

"Not even Yordilians could be so brutal!" said Alan.

"You're such a smart boy," Colossia commended him. "I've got a niece your age. She may want to meet you."

"What's she talking about?" Jenna asked Fern and Alan. "What are they gonna do to London?"

"They're going to kill everyone," said Alan grimly.

"Aren't you?" said Fern, glaring accusingly at Colossia.

The cat woman nodded. "The general has given the order to lay waste to London and leave no survivors," she stated. "The order can only be changed by a communiqué from me, providing the specific coordinates of Petula's position." To Jenna she added, "Now would be a good time to get in touch with your doctor friend."

Jenna had only a second to reflect on what she had done…

…when a pair of fearsome-looking dogs literally flew through the still-open doorway. The female greyhound and male pit bull growled ferociously at the Yordilians, prompting them to draw their guns. This led to an uncanny and spectacular battle, as the pit bull sliced one of the alien weapons to ribbons with his foot-long, razor-sharp claws, and the greyhound employed sheer concentration to make the guns fly from the hands of two more cat women.

All at once a soothing voice spoke to the minds of the children: _Get out of the house, quickly!_

They were only too eager to obey. As they fled in confusion, a bullet from one of the Yordilian weapons struck the pit bull in mid-backflip. He plunged to the floor and appeared lifeless for a moment, then jumped to his feet and rejoined the fray, none the worse for wear.

Tommy and Timmy pushed Tegan's wheelchair to a rendezvous point with Arthur, D.W., Vicita, George, Sal, Alan, Fern, Francine, and Jenna. "What's happening in there?" the teenage girl inquired of them. "Whose dogs are those?"

"They're Jean Greyhound and Wolfie," D.W. told her. "They're two of the X-Pets."

"I don't know what they're doing here," Arthur added, "unless they're taking revenge for Amazon Puppy's death."

They watched as several more dogs of all shapes and colors charged into George's house, the last of which had dark blue fur and a forked tail. There was a burst of light from inside, and the chaotic noises suddenly gave way to silence.

"What just happened?" Jenna wondered. Before the others could dissuade her, she hurried back to the scene of the fight. Other than Jenny, who was straining to lift herself from the couch, and Mr. Nordgren, who sat in his easy chair with a dazed expression, the living room was completely empty. The Yordilians and the dogs were nowhere in sight.

Alan and Fern arrived behind her. "They're all gone," Alan observed. "They just disappeared."

"We have to find them," said Fern with determination. "Unless we can get Colossia to contact her general, London will be destroyed!"

----

to be continued


	28. Blitzkrieg

The column in the center of the TARDIS console came to a rest, and the time vessel ceased from its quivering. "Here we are," said the Doctor with satisfaction. 

"Where's here?" Sue Ellen asked him.

"'Here' is the Grand Colonnade," said the Doctor, straightening his tie. "It's where the members of the Grand Council assemble to make decisions affecting the entire Alliance. It's much like the capitol building in Washington D.C.—you can even get bean soup here."

"Sounds exciting," said the cat girl. "Can I brush my hair before we go out?"

"Certainly," said the Doctor. "The little girls' room is five doors down on the left, just past the grown woman's room."

He watched, amused, as Sue Ellen scampered away. _I haven't seen that many curls since I woke up after my third regeneration and looked in a mirror,_ he thought.

She returned a minute later, her gobs of hair fixed with bands. "Before we leave the TARDIS," said the Doctor seriously, "I must make sure that you understand the consequences of what we're about to do. Yes, your parents will be tried before an Alliance court and most likely imprisoned, if you cooperate. On the positive side of the balance, the people of Earth will enjoy their lives and freedom for yet another day. Knowing this, are you prepared to do as I tell you?"

"Yes," said the girl without hesitation. "I don't know you, but…but something tells me I can trust you."

"That's a good kitty," said the Doctor. "Let's go."

The doors of the blue booth opened, exposing to the Time Lord and the cat girl a rather unremarkable vista of an office lined with silver, wood-grained panels. In the center sat a desk with an outwardly curved front edge, and behind the desk a hairless alien being with four eyes, four arms, and four lumps hidden behind its mail-like white shirt.

"Well, the alien's cool," Sue Ellen remarked. "But where's everything else?"

"You can sightsee later," the Doctor told her. "Trust me, it'll be worth the wait."

As he stepped up to the desk, the four-armed alien peered at him with its four eyes. "Teleportation devices are forbidden in the council chambers," it cautioned him in a low-pitched female voice. "You must check your device here before proceeding further."

"I have important business with the Secretary of Security," said the Time Lord officiously. "Tell him the Doctor is here. We've spoken before."

"One moment, please," said the female alien in a disinterested tone. She typed a few commands into a keyboard, then stated, "The Secretary will see you shortly. Please lean against the wall, or stand if you prefer."

----

Buster and Roland ran with all their might, but had a difficult time keeping up with Beat and her longer legs. "Take cover!" she yelled at all the lonely children she passed. "London is under attack! It's the Blitz all over again!"

There were only a few signs suspended from the ceiling to indicate where they were headed. The explosions were distant but frequent. They stopped periodically to look through the windows, and noticed that the flocks of green bombers had grown in number—three squadrons were now circling London. "We have to get to the Tube," said Beat with urgency. "It's the only place that's safe."

"The Tube?" said Buster eagerly. "Cool! Do we crawl through it, or do we get shot out of it?"

"Neither," replied Beat. "We cower like frightened rabbits, if you'll pardon the simile."

"The Tube is what the train goes through," Roland explained. "It's underground, so we'll be protected."

"Right," said Buster. "Unless the aliens have gas weapons that mutate people and turn them into slime monsters."

"You're a queer one, you are," remarked Roland.

They kept running, even on the moving walkway. "There _must_ be a sign directing us to the Tube," said Beat, frustrated. "But I haven't seen one for kilometres."

A sudden, powerful explosion made the ground tremble beneath them—a small office building not far away had been blown to shreds. A bright green warship, its shape like that of a boomerang with sloping wings, flew past at tremendous speed, the angry whine of its engine clearly audible. Flames spurted from the building's shell, licking at the early morning sky.

The three children stopped in their tracks, unsure of where to go. "They're not just attacking military targets," said Beat in a somber tone. "They mean to destroy us all!"

----

As the other kids tended to the recuperating Jenny, D.W. led Jenna, Alan, Fern, Francine, and the optically challenged Arthur in a desperate rush to her house. "Pal's a good friend of the X-Pets," Arthur told the others. "If anyone can put us through to them, he can."

"I wonder how he'll take it when he hears that Amazon Puppy's dead," pondered Francine.

The little dog was tied up in the yard, panting and whining as if impatient to be fed and watered. He leaped and yapped at the sight of Arthur, who immediately began to speak with him. "Pal, we have an emergency," he said. "You need to contact the X-Pets, _now._"

"Blagga blagga blooga blooga," was all Pal heard, and he leaped and yapped with more zeal.

"Pal, London is about to be wiped off the map," Arthur continued. "You know, London? Beat's hometown?" He even tried imitating the chimes of Big Ben, but the dog only barked with oblivious delight.

"He doesn't understand," D.W. observed. "We need someone who can talk to animals—someone like Greta."

Arthur's first impulse was to chide her, but he decided to suspend his disbelief. "Greta!" he cried into the empty air. "Greta, where are you?"

"Oh, darn," D.W. moaned. "Arthur, you scared her away by believing in her."

"This is all _my_ fault," said Jenna sadly. "I didn't think they'd destroy all of London just to get one baby."

"Maybe it was just a bluff," Fern postulated. "Maybe Colossia was trying to pressure you into giving the exact location."

"And maybe it _wasn't_ a bluff," said Alan. "We can't take that chance."

From inside the Read house, Arthur heard the ringing of the telephone. "Who'd be calling us in the middle of an invasion?" he wondered.

"You'd better answer it," Francine urged him. "It could be FEMA."

"Yeah, right," said Arthur.

The phone rang and rang. He marched inside, passing by his father who was curled up in a corner of the kitchen, mumbling, "Rat droppings…rat droppings in the flour…rat droppings in the sugar…I'm ruined! Ruined!"

"Hello?" said Arthur as he picked up the receiver.

"Hi, Arthur," uttered an unfamiliar girl's voice. "It's Vanessa."

----

To be continued


	29. Follow That Dog!

"Normally my folks wouldn't let me call you," said Arthur's friend Vanessa, formerly known as Van. "But I woke up this morning, and everyone was acting crazy—Mom, Dad, Logan, Odette. Only Dallin and I were normal. I don't know what to do about Megan. I don't know how to be a mom—I barely know how to be a _girl._" 

"Yeah, we've got the same thing—" Arthur tried to interject.

"I didn't know who else to call," Vanessa went on. "This weirdness, whatever it is, it's spreading everywhere. I thought maybe it hadn't reached Elwood City yet."

"It _started_ in Elwood—"

"Mom thinks we're all possessed by evil spirits. Dad thinks all his clients are trying to kill him. Logan thinks he's turning into a girl like I did—he can't stop touching his chest to make sure it's still flat. Odette thinks her neck's getting shorter, and she's talking about hanging herself to stretch it out."

"That's great, but I don't have time for—"

"By the way, I can talk without quacking now, but you've noticed that. I turned into some kind of horse person, but with a pointy horn sticking out of my forehead. The animals in the neighborhood tell me I'm a unicorn, and that I'll live for thousands of years. Wow, can you imagine that? Fifty years from now I'll still look like a little girl, and a hundred years from now my family will all be dead, and five hundred years from now I'll forget that I was ever a boy in a wheelchair."

"I really need to go," Arthur insisted. "It was nice talking to you, Vanessa."

Just as he readied himself to put down the receiver, a light turned on in his brain. "Wait a minute," he said, putting the phone to his head again. "Did you say the animals _talk_ to you?"

"Uh-huh," said Vanessa. "The first animal to talk to me was a cat named Goodkitty. She comes to my house every day, and I feed her, and we talk, although I do most of the talking. I don't know why I talk so much. I wasn't like this when I was a boy. Maybe I just appreciate talking more after what happened with the quacking and all. It's the same thing with walking. I couldn't walk before, and now that I can, I want to walk everywhere, even to the mall. I'd walk to church, but my mom won't let me wear sneakers to church, so…"

"Okay, I got it," said Arthur, who had already picked up Pal and was holding his floppy ear up to the receiver. "Listen, Vanessa, I need you to talk to Pal, and tell him to lead us to the X-Pets."

"What's an X-Pet?" asked the girl on the other end.

"Never mind what an X-Pet is," said Arthur. "It's very important. Millions of lives are depending on you. Will you do it?"

"Okay, I'll try," said Vanessa.

She let out an ethereal howl, and Pal perked up his ears. "Is that you, Pal?" were the words he understood.

"Woof," he replied, which to Vanessa sounded like, "Yes, it's me."

"Arthur wants you to lead him to the X-Pets," said Vanessa in a series of barks. "He says millions of people will die if you don't."

"Millions?" Pal woofed incredulously. "Surely he's exaggerating. He is, after all, only a fifth-grade math student."

"Please, pretty doggie," Vanessa begged sweetly.

Pal let out a whine of resignation. "All right, I'll do it. But if it turns out that millions of people are _not_ about to die, I'll do something terrible, like pee on the carpet."

He bounded away from Arthur's arms, barking wildly. The aardvark boy dropped the receiver without hanging it up, pursued Pal through the front door, and shouted to his friends, "Follow that dog!"

Pal barreled down the sidewalk, leading behind him Fern, Alan, Francine, Jenna, and D.W., who dragged Arthur along by the hand. They covered block after block, and it seemed the kids would tire before the dog did. "Would you mind telling me who the X-Pets are?" Alan asked no one in particular.

"They're mutant super dogs," Arthur explained. "Each of them has a different power."

"And my cat's their arch-enemy," Francine added.

"They saved me when the Sentinels tried to drag me off to the land of the unicorns," said D.W.

"Interesting," Alan mused. "I wonder if _every_ town has a super dog team like that."

"Nope," said Francine. "Just this one."

----

The interview between the Doctor, Sue Ellen, and the Alliance Secretary of Security did not go well. "I've heard all sorts of alarmist stories about the sufferings of the people of Earth in the absence of Alliance scrutiny," said the tall, green-bearded alien in his gruff voice. "To make matters more difficult, neither of you is an Alliance citizen, so neither of you has a right to lay complaints at my feet to begin with. Therefore, Mr. Doctor, my answer is no—I will _not_ examine the evidence you claim to possess."

The Doctor bowed his head in disappointment. "But, Mr. Secretary," Sue Ellen intervened, "I heard it from my dad's own mouth that he's plotting to turn all the people of Earth into robot slaves."

The elderly alien smiled and patted her curls. "You like robots, do you? Let me tell you something, little girl. Only two zektars from here is a huge store with robot toys the likes of which you've never seen on your own planet. You don't play with them, they play with _you_. I can have my administrative assistant fill out a gift voucher for you, if you'd like."

"Don't patronize me, you stupid old meanie," said Sue Ellen, and she stuck out her tongue at him.

Dismissed by the Secretary of Security, the Doctor and his little companion sat across from each other in the TARDIS lounge, sulking over their failure. "He's one of the conspirators, I'm positive of it," said the Doctor darkly. "You did the right thing by flashing your tongue—in fact, you should have thumbed your nose at him as well."

"I blew it," the cat girl moaned. "Because of me, all my friends on Earth will end up like Prunella, with chips in their brains that force them to obey the Yordilians."

"It's more my fault than yours," said the Doctor comfortingly. "You're a mere schoolgirl, while I've been saving planets from destruction for more centuries than I can remember. I've faced enemies that would make the hosts of Yordil soil their trousers—the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Black Guardian, even the very Beast of the Pit. This should be a walk in the park for me." He sighed. "Perhaps I still haven't fully recovered from losing Rose."

"Who's Rose?" Sue Ellen asked him. "And how did you lose her?"

"I'll tell you," said the Doctor.

(SPOILER DELETED)

"And that's how I came to lose Rose," he concluded.

Sue Ellen leaned forward and stroked her chin. "Rose sounds like the kind of girl who'd never give up," she remarked. "She'd think of a way to deal with the Yordilians."

"Indeed," said the Doctor, his voice tinged with melancholy. "She stood up to Satan himself and won. But she's not here now—it's only you and me." He grinned playfully. "I don't suppose _you_ have any brilliant ideas."

"Only one," said the girl, "but it's too dangerous."

"Share it with me," the Doctor urged.

"Okay." Sue Ellen coughed to clear her throat. "My dad said something about a disease created by Yordilian scientists that could wipe out everyone on Earth, just like that. He said they weren't going to use it, because they're not monsters."

"Right," said the Doctor sarcastically. "Don't kill, just enslave. It's what Jesus would do."

"I was thinking," the cat girl continued, "what if we made it look like the Yordilians _are_ going to use the disease and kill everybody?"

"Hmm," the Time Lord pondered. "That would certainly cause some of the conspirators to rethink their ways. But how would we conjure up such an illusion?"

"That's the dangerous part," said Sue Ellen. "We sneak into the lab where the disease is kept, we steal some of it, and we plant it on one of the Yordilian ships on its way to invade Earth."

The Doctor shook his head. "You're right, that _is_ too dangerous. All it takes is for the ship carrying the disease to be blasted, and helloooo, apocalypse."

"Wait," Sue Ellen piped up. "Here's a better idea. What if…"

----

The Doctor and Sue Ellen weren't the only people in urgent need of ideas. Far away at Heathrow Airport, Beat, Buster, and Roland watched in dismay as a new wave of Yordilian raiders shot out of what appeared to be an interstellar conduit in the morning sky. "One hundred and five, one hundred and six, one hundred and seven…" Beat counted. "Oh, I give up. Who's the idiot that built this bloody airport? Why are there no signs showing the way to the Tube?"

A series of explosions, louder and closer together than the last ones, shook the floor underneath their feet. "The city's on fire," said Roland grimly. "It's the end of everything, it is." The scenes of destruction were unavoidable—in whatever direction they looked, one London neighborhood after another went up in flame and smoke.

"I'm frightened," said Beat, her pupils quivering. "Hold me, Buster."

The rabbit boy recoiled. "_I'm_ not gonna hold you," he snapped.

"Hold me, Roland," said Beat, turning to the aardvark boy.

"Yes'm," said Roland dutifully, and he stretched his arms around the girl.

The embrace brought a thrill to her heart. While she probed the depths of Roland's back with her fingers, the boy felt something odd. "You've got _things_," he noted.

"Things?" said Beat innocently.

"_Girl_ things," said Roland. "How old _are_ you?"

Beat opened her mouth to answer, and Gate E4 exploded into a maelstrom of fire.

The concussive wave knocked the three children onto the ground. The heat singed their ears and made their hairs stand on end. When they lifted their heads, they saw in one direction a streamlined green raider trailing clouds of mist, and in another direction the gaping, glowing hole in the corridor that had once been a departure gate.

"Bloody hell!" cried Beat, her voice scarcely audible above the alien fighter's roar. "They're here! _We're done for!_"

----

to be continued


	30. She Was So Young

The two women in airtight suits arrived at the very lowest floor of the Torchwood building, and were greeted by a dimly lit, stony corridor similar to the one to which the Doctor had brought Bitzi and her family. "I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to isolate Petula," said Desirée, who occupied one of the suits, "but if the reports we've received are accurate, the alien pathogen obviously has _no effect_ on children." 

The infant was protected by nothing but a thin blanket. Bitzi lifted her up against the visor of her suit, but could bring her no nearer. _If only I could kiss you_, she thought glumly. _It might be worth a few paranoid delusions._

She walked after Desirée, and a steel wall descended over the elevator door behind her. Several other Torchwood personnel in hazmat suits approached the two ladies, one of them appearing to be an anthropomorphic giraffe man with an extra long neck shield. "Make yourselves at home," he said welcomingly. "We've got food, water, and oxygen to last six months, if it comes to that."

"I surely hope it _doesn't_ come to that," said Bitzi. "_Anything_ could happen to Buster, Beat, and Harry in the space of six months."

"True," said Desirée in an electronically modified voice. "So it should come as a reassurance to you that we at Torchwood are not entirely defenseless." Having said that, she pressed a hidden panel in the wall, and it swiveled to reveal a computer console with a large, flat viewing screen.

"What is that?" asked Bitzi curiously. The screen came to life, displaying a graphical outline of the city of London and a number of radar blips which she took to represent enemy raiders.

One of those raiders was, at that instant, swinging around to make another bombing run over Concourse E of Heathrow Airport. Buster, Beat, and Roland were aware of its coming, and fled in the only direction they could—away from the smoking rubble of Gate E4.

"It's headed straight for us!" cried Buster. The boomerang-shaped fighter waggled slightly as it settled into a direct course. _That is one freakin' cool ship_, thought the rabbit boy. _I wish I could fly one instead of being killed by one._

"Run faster!" Beat urged her comrades.

"What for?" was Roland's response. "There's no place to hide!"

The Yordilian craft loomed larger and larger, to the point that Buster could almost make out the face of the cat woman pilot through the cockpit. _She's looking at us_, he realized. _She sees us. This is the end…_

Just as the three children were estimating the remainder of their lives in seconds, something fantastic and unexpected took place. A beam of pure white energy flew up from the center of London, illuminating the sky as it tore through the wing of an unlucky raider and reduced it to fire and ashes. Moments later another ray was fired, striking the center of an alien craft and crushing it into pieces so small that nothing was visible of it.

The Yordilian pilot turned her attention away from the corridor where Beat, Buster, and Roland cowered, and swerved abruptly, shooting away at top speed toward the source of the deadly beams. Every ship and every squadron followed suit, and before long a formation of raiders circled around central London, letting loose with an avalanche of bombs. The mysterious ground weapon fired over and over, bringing down more than twenty of the attackers before being extinguished.

The walls of the Torchwood bunker trembled as Desirée watched the viewing screen go blank. "So much for the Bug Zapper, as we like to call it," she said to Bitzi. "It could take out a mother ship with one pulse, but it wasn't much use against an armada."

"You must have _other_ weapons," said the rabbit woman with concern.

"I'm afraid not," said Desirée, shaking her head. "The only thing now that stands between us and them is two metres of solid steel and twenty-four metres of concrete. As long as they stick to conventional, we'll be fine."

Downtown London was on fire. Buster, Beat, and Roland gazed at the flaming spires and the ever-widening orbits of the alien fighters, and realized that they had been granted but a brief reprieve.

Beat turned to Roland, looking rather sheepish. "The way I see it," she said, "if I survive this, my mum and dad will be too overjoyed to punish me. So…"

With that, she lunged forward, grasped the British boy's shoulder blades, and yanked him to her bosom. Their lips met, and for a few glorious seconds, Beat was in heaven.

"Ah, Roland?" said Buster. "There are some things you ought to know about girls."

----

The pursuit of the restless Pal led Arthur, D.W., Alan, Fern, Francine, and Jenna to the middle of a weed-strewn field more than a mile from where they had started. They saw nothing that resembled the headquarters of a canine super team. Arthur saw nothing at all.

Finally the little dog ground to a halt, turned, and whimpered at the human children. "What is it, boy?" asked D.W. as they circled around him.

The ground underneath them slid away. Screaming with fright, all six of them joined Pal in a freefall followed by a slide down a smooth steel ramp. They landed together in a dogpile at the base, except for Pal, who sat on his haunches and eyed them with amusement.

Francine was the first to extricate herself from the heap. Glancing around at the low-clearance passages with walls of sheet metal, she wondered, "Where the heck are we?"

The hidden panel moved back into place on its own, blocking the sunlight. Pal nodded at the kids as if congratulating them, and bounded away down the narrowest corridor. Francine went after him, bowing her head so she could fit, and a line of stooped children formed behind her. Only D.W. was able to raise her head high.

One by one they filed into a chamber resembling a small auditorium, with cushions in place of seats and a narrow stairway leading down to a circular stage. The audience consisted of a few dozen dogs, most of them snarling viciously and glaring at the six cat women who were seated and bound below. On one side of the row of Yordilians sat a Shih Tzu in a wheelchair—the dog Arthur, Francine, and D.W. recognized as The Professor. On the other side, garnished with a lily, lay the remains of Amazon Puppy.

Pal yelped in horror. Ignoring the angry surrounding dogs, he rushed down the stairway and climbed onto the bier where his baby sister had been placed. He sniffed the air around her, rubbed his nose with a paw, reared back his head, and let out an agonized howl.

The Shih Tzu looked at him with compassion, and gentle words entered his mind. _It's a terrible loss, Pal. I know how much you loved her._

"She was…she was so young," Pal sniffled.

The Professor turned his gaze to the children, and the dogs on the cushions ceased from growling. _We have human visitors. Perhaps they have come to observe the trial._ The cat women, their wrists tied with chicken wire, could only glare murderously.

Francine stepped forward. "Hi, Professor," she said in a friendly tone. "You remember me, and D.W., and Arthur, don't you?"

_Indeed I do_. The Shih Tzu sneezed between thoughts. _How is Greta?_

"Uh, we'll talk about Greta later," said Francine.

Jenna brushed the monkey girl aside with her arm. "Colossia!" she exclaimed, her voice echoing. "I lied. My story about Torchwood and the Doctor was made-up nonsense. Petula is _not_ in London."

"Quiet, Jenna!" said Francine sharply. "She'll kill you!"

"I'm prepared to die," said the cat girl bravely. "Colossia, tell your general to stop the attack on London, and then you can take _my_ life if you want."

"I'd love to help you," said the Yordilian facetiously, "but, as you can see, my hands are tied."

Butterflies waltzed in Fern's stomach as she looked at the cold, merciless, anything-but-soulful eyes of the many dogs seated in the chamber. "I am _not_ a dog person," she remarked to herself.

"Please, Professor," said Francine meekly, "you must let Colossia go so she can contact her people. Otherwise, millions of…millions of _dogs_ will lose their lives."

"Listen to the girl," said Colossia to the Shih Tzu.

The voice of The Professor's thoughts was dispassionate and stern: _Colossia and her companions will be released once their sentence has been carried out, and no sooner._

"Sentence?" said Arthur incredulously. "What sentence? Death by growling?"

The Professor's mind merged with his, and he beheld in detail the procedure that the Yordilians would be compelled to undergo as punishment for the crime of canicide.

His knees nearly buckled from the shock. "Not that," he said in terrified awe. "Even the Yordilians don't deserve _that!_"

----

To be continued


	31. Someone Who Understands

In the X-Pets' underground hall of justice, Arthur's companions Jenna, Fern, Alan, Francine, and D.W. crowded around him, anxious to learn from him what The Professor had in store for the captured Yordilians. "Whatever it is," said Jenna, "I hope it doesn't keep Colossia from calling off the attack on London." 

"Oh, it will," said the astonished aardvark boy. "Her calling-off days are over, that's for sure."

His words troubled Colossia, who wriggled in her chair and fought against the wire binding her hands. "What is it?" she yelled at Arthur. "What did he show you?"

"You don't want to know," he said to the blurry image of the cat woman. "But, what the heck, I'll tell you anyway. The Professor's basically going to turn you all into dogs."

The uniformed women responded with silent, incredulous glares. Even Arthur's friends and sister found it difficult to swallow. "Can the X-Pets _do_ that?" Francine wondered. "Do they have the power?"

"Do they have the _right?_" added Fern.

"It's not a physical change," Arthur explained. "It's a mental one. He's going to scramble their brains so they'll _think_ they're dogs."

"Whoaaah," marveled Alan. "And I thought Tegan's powers were scary."

The Yordilian captives exchanged solemn glances, and Colossia turned to the kids with a contrite expression. "Get us out of this mess," she offered, "and I swear by the souls of the men of Yordil, that I'll contact the general and tell her what you told me."

This was followed by a firm telepathic warning from The Professor: _It would not be wise to interfere._

An eerie silence filled the chamber, broken only by Pal's pathetic whining as he blocked his eyes with his paws at the edge of Amazon Puppy's funeral bed.

Fern spoke up courageously. "This is ridiculous," she said to the Shih Tzu. "You can't judge them. You can't punish them. You have no legal authority. For gosh sakes, all they did was shoot a _dog._"

As if prompted all at once, the dozens of dogs seated in the hall stared at Fern and growled balefully. The poodle girl began to stammer. "Er…ah…not that there's anything wrong with shooting a dog…uh, I mean…"

Alan marched down the stairway, heedless of the threatening canines. "Fern's right," he said, once he had reached eye level with The Professor. "What you're doing is taking the law into your own paws. The Yordilians may be invaders, but they're still protected by…by the Geneva Convention, or something like that."

"You tell him, son," said Colossia proudly.

The long-haired dog gazed deeply into Alan's eyes. _I see_, the boy heard in his mind. _Tegan…the Brainchildren…Raymond Mansch. Like me, you know how it is to discover in the worst possible way that you have terrible powers._

Alan stepped back, disturbed by the recollection of what he had done to Mansch in his panicked state.

_When my human master learned about my abilities, she tried to kill me_, The Professor recounted. _She hit me with a baseball bat, crippling my hind legs. Confused by pain and terror, I lashed out with a mental attack, hoping to eliminate the source of her anger and hatred. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the limbic center of her brain. For weeks she remained in a zombie-like condition, able to sleep, eat, and obey simple commands, but not much else. Once I had recovered from my injuries, I…_

"All right, that's enough!" said Alan, waving his hands. "I don't have time to listen to your life story. People are dying. _Animals_ are dying. Only Colossia can stop it."

The Shih Tzu's thoughtful eyes darted back and forth between Alan, the cat woman, and the lifeless form of Amazon Puppy. _Very well_, he finally agreed. _I propose a new arrangement._

His next thoughts were heard only by Alan and Colossia. The Yordilian woman nodded. "I accept," she said seriously.

"So do I," said Alan with a hint of uncertainty.

The Professor shot a glance at Jean Greyhound, who was resting on the front row of cushions. She, in turn, focused her gaze on the chicken wire that restrained the wrists of Colossia and her comrades, causing it to snap and unwind. As the other Yordilians trudged warily up the staircase past the fierce-looking dogs, Colossia remained behind and plucked the communication device from her belt.

Arthur and his companions stood aside, allowing the cat women to duck through the narrow portal leading to the outside world. "They'll kill us the first chance they get," Jenna whispered to Francine, although the escaping Yordilians seemed to pay no attention to the kids.

Alan timidly stuck out his hand to stroke The Professor's long hair as Colossia spoke with her commanding officer. "Petula is not in London," she stated. "I repeat, Petula is _not_ in London. The intelligence was spurious." She paused. "Unknown at this time. Thank you, sir. Colossia out." She flipped the communicator closed. "Well," she said confidently, "I've lived up to my half of the deal."

"So you'll stop the attack on London?" said Jenna hopefully.

"Oh, no," replied Colossia. "If you recall, I said that the order to destroy London would stand until I notified the general of Petula's exact location." She grinned wickedly. "So where exactly _is_ Petula, anyway?"

Jenna gasped, outraged. "You lied!"

"I told the truth…selectively," said the cat woman. Near her feet, The Professor was fondly licking Alan's palm, bringing a slight smile to the boy's lips.

Jenna gave Francine a look of desperation. "I'm out of ideas," she said with a shrug.

"You still have time to come forward with Petula's whereabouts," Colossia told the kids. "It takes a while to destroy a city the size of London with fighters alone. We _do_ have nuclear weapons, you know."

The Shih Tzu turned away from Alan and shook the hair from his eyes. _The sentence will now be inflicted upon Colossia_, he announced telepathically, _who has nobly allowed her compatriots to go free by assuming full responsibility for the murder of Amazon Puppy._

"Oh, dear," said the Yordilian with a tone of fake disappointment. "I guess you don't have time after all."

----

To be continued


	32. Something in Common

The kids saw their hopes drain away as The Professor and every other dog in the chamber stared intently at Colossia, as if trying to drill a hole in her skull and siphon out her brain. The cat woman, for her part, clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes, doing her best to fight the collective will of the X-Pets. Alan, from his vantage point near the stage, thought he could faintly hear their unified mental voices. 

"Please don't do this!" cried Jenna to the dogs below. "Everyone in London will die!"

All the X-Pets started to bark cacophonously, as if to either drown out Jenna's pleas or break Colossia's concentration. The Yordilian felt her resolve fading for only an instant, and then the meaning of the barks became clear to her. The dogs were insistently repeating the words:

"_One of us! One of us! One of us!_"

Startled by the fact that she could somehow interpret canine speech, she nonetheless remained defiant. "You've failed!" she mocked them. "You'll never make me into one of you!"

Arthur and the others gaped in shock. To their ears it seemed that Colossia was uttering, "Arf…arf…arf…"

"Don't give in!" urged Alan, his fists tight. "Resist! You're not a dog, you're a human…I mean, a Yordilian!" This only dismayed Colossia further, as the boy's words were completely unintelligible to her.

The X-pets ceased from barking and began to pant with satisfaction. Pal, crawling away from Amazon Puppy's side, glowered at the cat woman with a distraught but indignant expression. "You…killed…my…sister," he snarled.

Colossia looked down at her trembling hands. _It's an illusion, or a dream_, she told herself. _I'm not going to answer the dog._

"You killed my sister!" exclaimed Pal, his eyes flashing fire. "_Murderer!_"

"It was either that, or kill a child!" the Yordilian blurted out against her better judgment. The kids in the hall were tempted to giggle by the sight of Colossia's frantic barking.

"It's not permanent, is it?" Alan asked The Professor.

"Sadly, no," the Shih Tzu answered. "Over time she'll regain the ability to communicate with humans, and forget how to speak dog. I only hope she'll learn her lesson by then."

While Colossia pleaded and bickered with the dogs, Alan carried The Professor away with him, joining his friends as they stooped to leave the X-Pets' underground lair. "Alan," D.W. was the first to ask, "why are you bringing the wheelie dog with you?"

"He's _my_ dog now," Alan replied somberly. "That was part of the arrangement." As if to signal assent, The Professor licked his thumb.

"Your new dog just doomed the city of London to destruction," said Francine peevishly. "How do you feel about _that?_"

The calming voice of the Shih Tzu said to their minds, _I wouldn't worry about London._

_---- _

"Petula is not in London," said Colossia into her phone. "I repeat, Petula is _not_ in London. The intelligence was spurious."

"If she's not in London," responded General Thaloma from the top of a hill in England, "then where is she?"

"Unknown at this time," said Colossia.

The general sighed and leaned against the bulkhead of her bomber. "I'm sorry," she said seriously, "but your strategy of bombing London block by block to persuade the humans to reveal Petula's location is clearly not working. I'm putting a stop to it. This is supposed to be an occupation, not a massacre."

"Thank you, sir," said Colossia, hiding her disappointment. "Colossia out." _For all they know, it's still going on_, she thought, looking through the corner of her eye at the kids.

General Thaloma gazed dolefully at the flocks of warships that circled London like persistent vultures. _Damn that baby, and all the trouble she's put us through. _ Gesturing toward one of her subordinate officers, she said, "Tell the fighters to stop hitting civilian targets. That's a direct order."

The cold November air seeped into the corridors of Heathrow Airport through the blasted walls of Concourse E. Buster, Beat, and Roland, their noses pressed against the plexiglass, watched with relief as the Yordilian raiders, one by one, changed course away from the center of London. "They've stopped dropping bombs," Beat marveled. "Perhaps they've accepted our surrender."

"No way," said Buster firmly. "_I'll_ never surrender."

"What will you do?" Beat asked him. "Organize a guerilla resistance group?"

Buster grinned, fascinated by the prospect of leading an army of apes against his Yordilian oppressors.

Roland pulled his face away from the window and smiled. "We're still alive," he noted. "Joyful news, that."

"It certainly is," said Beat, gazing wistfully at the boy. "Now we can set about to do the things we've only dreamed of doing. In my case, that means kissing you again."

She reached out and pursed her lips, but Roland backed away. "I…I'm very sorry," he said sheepishly.

"What's wrong?" said Beat with concern. "Are you afraid of girls?"

"No," replied Roland, his eyes moving back and forth between his shoes and Beat's face. "I'm not a whit afraid of girls. I _like_ girls. I like girls too much, if you go by my mum and dad."

"Then there's another thing we have in common," said Beat. "I like _boys_ too much."

Roland eyed the pair of lumps under the girl's dress, and experienced a sudden illumination. "Good blimey," he said slowly. "You've got it too. You're an early bloomer, you are."

Beat's tone became sober. "Yes," she confirmed. "I've been like this since summer. I'm only ten."

"Don't be ashamed, Beatrice," said Roland comfortingly. "The same thing happened to _me_, it did."

When Beat understood his meaning, her jaw dropped a kilometre.

----

To be continued


	33. I'm Dead

Sue Ellen's parents were seated in the mess hall of the Thrag station, enjoying a dinner of synthesized veal marsala, when Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r approached their table and stood rigidly. "I apologize for interrupting your meal," he said officiously, "but you should know that I've been contacted by the Alliance Secretary of Security. The Doctor has been to see him, and your daughter was with him." 

The Armstrongs expressed their relief with sighs. "Thank goodness my little girl is safe," said the cat woman.

"I'm sorry to hear that she's sided with the Doctor against us," said the cat man. "He must be very persuasive."

"I don't understand it," said Mrs. Armstrong, shaking her head. "True, we invaded her planet and shot her principal, but we're still her parents, and that should mean something."

"How _is_ Mr. Haney?" Mr. Armstrong asked the Thrag officer.

"Recovering rapidly," replied T'l'p'g'r. "I give him four more days in the infirmary." He paused ominously. "I also have news of Prunella."

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Armstrong eagerly.

"Her microchip is no longer transmitting," the lieutenant reported. "From the looks of it, she's dead."

----

At Heathrow, Roland and Beat regarded each other in awe. "That's so incredible," the rabbit-aardvark girl marveled. "I was told that early puberty happened to boys as well, but I'd never met one before."

"You must get funny looks in the girls' locker, eh?" said Roland.

"All the bloody time," was Beat's reply.

"Here as well," said Roland knowingly. "It's like having devil horns, it is."

They chuckled with delight together. "I hope I don't have to break you two up," said Buster maturely.

----

Alan, Jenna, Francine, Fern, Arthur, and D.W. took each step cautiously, certain that Colossia's fellow Yordilian agents would pounce on them at any moment. The trip back to George's house was quiet and tense.

Jenna suddenly froze. "I hear something!" she exclaimed.

A clanking sound followed, and Francine's cat Nemo emerged from a bag full of discarded cans. "That's no cat woman," said D.W. jokingly. "It's just a cat." Nemo exchanged menacing glares with The Professor as he sauntered away.

Unbeknownst to them, the Yordilians were still huddling in the field where the entrance to the X-Pets' hall of justice lay. "Forget about Petula and the kids," one of them said grimly to the others. "We've got to do something about those meddling dogs."

Francine looked into the innocent eyes of the Shih Tzu, who was straddled over Alan's shoulder. "So, Professor," she said curiously, "can you tell us where the Yordilians are hiding?"

Alan glanced backwards at her. "The…Professor…does…not…wish…to…be…disturbed," he said robotically.

Francine, startled, put her hand over her mouth. "Joking," said Alan with a grin.

They witnessed an astonishing sight on the street where George lived—a crowd of dozens, possibly hundreds, of children standing on both sidewalks and the pavement in between. George, Sal, Vicita, and the Tibbles were there, along with Tegan in her wheelchair. "What's this all about?" asked Fern when she encountered them.

"We have a new Lord of the Flies!" exclaimed Vicita with glee.

"She promised to feed us," said Binky, who was pacing nearby. "She's got _my_ vote."

"Hi, D.W.," said Nadine, who was also present. "I didn't get breakfast this morning. My mom's been watching TV for hours and hours—she thinks there are secret messages."

"My mom thinks my dad's cheating on her," D.W. countered.

"Then why doesn't she just stop playing?" said Nadine.

They waited restlessly for a short time, and Jenny arrived, her healthy appearance restored, balancing an impossibly tall stack of white boxes in each of her rubbery arms. "Who wants Ding Dongs?" she cried out to the kids, who erupted into cheers.

----

The last thing Prunella remembered was curling up in a patch of grass near the highway, and shivering fitfully as she tried to fall asleep. When she awoke, the coldness of the air was gone. The grass was gone. _Everything_ was gone.

She clambered to her feet, looking this way and that at the endless white void that engulfed her. _I'm dead_, she told herself.

----

To be continued


	34. Asrael

Prunella took a wary step forward, but felt as if her body hadn't moved at all. _So this is the world of the spirits_, she thought. _I hope they've forgotten all the times I angered them. Gosh, I suppose I'm one of them now._ She chuckled at the notion. _Maybe Rubella or my mom will summon me in a séance. I'd better start rehearsing._

Staring into the white emptiness and waving her arms, she cried out, "Avenge my death! _Aveeeenge my deeeeath!_"

"You're not dead," uttered a soft male voice. The surprise knocked Prunella off her feet, but instead of falling over, she began to spin about.

"Who's there?" she shouted frantically. "God? Buddha? The Invisible Man?"

"I'm the Doctor," the voice spoke again.

"Am I in a hospital?" she asked.

Sue Ellen stood in the console room of the TARDIS, gazing in wonder at the baseball-sized, platinum-hued cube the Doctor held evenly in his hand. "How can she fit inside that little box?" she asked.

"It operates on the same principle as the TARDIS," the Time Lord explained. "It contains a passage into an artificially generated dimension."

"What's in the dimension?" the girl asked.

"_She_ is," the Doctor answered. "As a child, she's immune to the Yordilian pathogen, but she still carries it. That's why I sealed her inside this hyperbox. As a last resort, I'm prepared to drop the box off at a meeting of the Grand Council, release Prunella and the pathogen, and allow events to take their course. They'll almost certainly declare me a _persona non grata_, but they'll be forced to pay attention to Earth."

"Is that you, Sue Ellen?" came a faint voice from the hyperbox.

"Don't worry, Doctor," said the cat girl fearlessly. "My plan will work. You'll be a _non persona non grata_ when this is all over."

"Brave heart, Sue Ellen," said the Doctor, patting her head.

In the center of Yordilopolis, the capital city of the planet Yordil, stood a granite building with a plaque that read, CENTER FOR DISEASE PREVENTION AND CONTROL. It was winter, and many cat women and girls walked past the structure wearing thick jackets and caps, oblivious to the fact that a blue booth was materializing out of nowhere inside one of its corridors.

Galatia, a security guard clad in a red and green uniform, gazed through a window at a band of warmly dressed protesters across the busy street. One of them held up a sign with the motto, CDPC ACCOMPLICES TO MASS MURDER; another picketer's message was, CDPC BRING BACK OUR MEN. She groaned inwardly. _Why can't they understand? We lost our husbands and sons just like they did. We didn't have the resources to save them._

As she walked off to continue her rounds, a sobbing noise reached her pointed ears. Following it, she discovered a distraught-looking girl seated on the marble floor—an orange-haired girl who resembled in every respect a Yordilian schoolchild, even down to the drab uniform. The girl looked up at her hopefully, tears staining her rosy cheeks.

"Oh, you poor thing," said Galatia. "Where's your mother? Are you lost?"

Sue Ellen wiped her nose on the sleeve of her school outfit. "I'm on a field trip," she said in fluent Yordilian. "I got separated from my teacher and the other kids."

"A field trip?" The guard became thoughtful. "I didn't know a school tour was scheduled for today." Bending over, she drew up the sorrowing girl by the hand. "Come on, I'll take you to the front office."

"Thank you, nice lady," said Sue Ellen, and she hurried to keep up with the long-legged Galatia. The moment they were out of sight, the Doctor emerged from the shadows wearing a pair of sneakers, and crept silently down another corridor.

----

Midnight had fallen upon England, but the officers at General Thaloma's brightly-lit encampment had no time for sleep. The general herself was taking a break from observing the routines and giving orders, so she could ingest a few alertness pills and contact her superiors in regards to the overall status of the occupation of Earth.

"Our squadrons have just finished bombing Lobachevsky Air Force Base and Los Cactos National Laboratory," reported the cat woman whose stern-looking face appeared on the general's TV wristband. "With all of Earth's major military installations destroyed, the ground troops should encounter little meaningful resistance."

"Understood," said General Thaloma. "Civilian casualties?"

"Slight," replied her commander. "Nothing like what you've racked up in London. Not to worry—you'll come off smelling like a rose in the story my press agent is writing for the folks on the homeworld. You may even be looking at a promotion."

"All I really care about is being first in line for a man," said Thaloma facetiously.

"That's what we _all_ want," said the woman on the TV screen. "The effects of the delusion-inducing pathogen should start to wear off in an hour or two. I've been told that the Frenchmen are the best lovers, so you may want to start your search there."

The general snickered in spite of herself. As she switched off the receiver on her wrist, another uniformed cat woman approached her. "General Thaloma!" she yelled, her wide eyes suggesting bad tidings. "We've received a shipment from Yordil. I think you'll want to take a look at this."

Thaloma accompanied her to a hastily assembled interstellar portal on another part of the hill, where several Yordilian women were examining the fluid-filled vials contained inside an unmarked box. She took a quick glance and said to the officer who had summoned her, "Thessalona, you're the expert on our biological arsenal. Tell me what this stuff is."

The cat woman cleared her throat. "Sir," she stated solemnly, "the substance in these vials is the anti-Asrael vaccine. There can be no mistake."

_Asrael._ General Thaloma's heart lost all its warmth.

"I thought Asrael was a myth," she said, her voice low.

"No, sir," said Thessalona. "It's very real. There are no instructions attached to the shipment, but my assumption is that the High Command expects us to vaccinate ourselves in advance of the possible deployment of Asrael against the population of Earth."

"They wouldn't!" By this time Thaloma's face had turned pale from fear. "They'd kill everyone! They'd kill all the _men!_"

----

to be continued


	35. The Cavalry to the Rescue

"You make a good point, sir," said Thessalona. "To wipe out the people of Earth would be a senseless blunder indeed." She narrowed her eyes pensively. "Unless…" 

"Unless _what?_" General Thaloma demanded.

"Well, sir," said the underling, "you know how anxious our partners in the Alliance are to find and destroy the daughter of Dark Augusta's twin—a child who's slipped through Colossia's fingers twice now, and could be hiding anywhere on this planet."

"I'm starting to get your meaning," said the general darkly. "If you're right, then the agenda of our Alliance partners is no longer compatible with ours. They want Petula dead, and to that end they'll kill everybody on Earth, including its precious men."

"I see we're on the same page, sir," said Thessalona.

General Thaloma turned away and stared at the grass by her feet. "The High Command wouldn't go along with this unless our Alliance partners threatened them with a very, _very_ big stick," she muttered.

"Whatever the truth may be, sir," said the other cat woman, "I recommend that we take the situation seriously, and initiate the process of vaccination. If we're clever, perhaps we can vaccinate some of the Earth males and save them for ourselves."

"Agreed," said the general without looking up.

----

Many light-years away, Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r and the Armstrongs were faced with one of the same sinister vials. "I spoke with the director of the CDPC in Yordilopolis," Mrs. Armstrong related. "She denied any knowledge of the shipment, but the evidence clearly points to the fact that a crate of anti-Asrael vaccine _was_ taken from the CDPC's vault and distributed to the Yordilian encampments on Earth as well as to us."

"But why?" said Mr. Armstrong, flustered. "And who gave the order? I told Sue Ellen with a straight face that we would never use Asrael or anything like it against Earth. And now _this_ happens, and we've been left entirely out of the loop. It's an outrage! I won't stand for it!"

"There's only one plausible explanation," boomed T'l'p'g'r. "Someone above us in the faction has decreed that Petula Winslow must die, regardless of the cost to Earth and the inconvenience to the Yordilians."

"That's insane!" Mrs. Armstrong blurted out. "How can one little baby girl be dangerous enough to warrant the death of an entire race?"

"Perhaps we've _all_ been a bit insane," remarked her husband.

A light on one of the consoles flashed, accompanied by a shrill beeping. "I have a call," said T'l'p'g'r, excusing himself from the feline couple.

The view screen activated, showing him the green, bearded face of the Secretary of Security. "Greetings, Lieutenant T'l'p'g'r of the Thrag Star Police," said the old alien respectfully. "The Doctor and the girl have visited me again, this time with the most absurd claim yet. They say the Yordilians occupying Earth are inoculating themselves against a biological weapon capable of eradicating all life."

Before T'l'p'g'r could get a word out, the Armstrongs flanked him. "It's not only absurd, but _true_, Mr. Secretary," the cat man stated.

The green-skinned official's jaw fell. "You're not serious!"

"The disease center on Yordil has shipped vaccines to the occupying forces on Earth _and_ to us," Mr. Armstrong went on.

The Secretary of Security shook his head with regret. "I had doubts about this conspiracy from the day I joined it," he stated. "I won't have the blood of the children of Earth on my hands. I'm left with no choice but to make the entire Council aware of our complicity, no matter the consequences for my political career."

"Have no worries regarding your career, Mr. Secretary," T'l'p'g'r assured him. "I will take full responsibility."

"That's noble of you, Lieutenant," said the Secretary.

Once the video conversation ended, T'l'p'g'r turned his helmeted face to the Armstrongs. "Report to your cell," he ordered. "Everything's going back to the way it was before we became partners. Many people will soon go to prison, but I don't intend to be one of them—for I, a Thrag, am the very symbol of law and order."

----

The evening dragged on in Elwood City. Alan, his parents driven from home by their irrational concerns, was left with nothing to do but converse telepathically with the Professor, or find a TV station that was still functioning. He pushed the remote button again and again, only to be confronted by blank or snowy screens. Finally the image of an angry man appeared, a large, bronzed crucifix standing behind him.

"When the book of the seven seals is opened, God will pour out his judgments upon humanity!" the man ranted. "They will be punished for their murders, and fornications, and abortions, and same-sex marriages, and stem cell research, and witchcraft-promoting children's books! Their flesh shall rot from their bones, and their eyes from their sockets!"

"This _can't_ be the only thing still on the air," moaned Alan.

_It doesn't come as much of a surprise_, thought the Professor.

With a bored yawn, the boy switched off the TV and ripped open a package of Ding Dongs. Just as he took his first bite, his father appeared in the front doorway, confusion in his eyes. "Oh, Dad," said Alan flatly. "It's you."

"I need to ask you something," said Mr. Powers, sounding a bit embarrassed. "I know it sounds stupid, but…the timer on the microwave doesn't _really_ tell you how much longer you have to live, does it?"

"No, Dad," replied Alan.

"I _knew_ it!" said the bear man, relieved. "Whatever gave me that idea?"

Alan, seeing the change in his father, jumped out of the easy chair. "Dad, you're better!" he exclaimed with joy. "_You're cured!_"

At Arthur's house, Mr. Read lifted the lid from the sugar bowl and peeked inside. "No rat droppings here," he noted. "I don't know what I was so afraid of."

Maria Harris picked up the remote and turned off her TV. _I don't know why I watch that garbage_, she thought. _It's just words. There are no hidden codes._

"I'm sorry for thinking you were contaminated by radioactive waste," Mr. Nordgren told his wife.

"It's just one of those things, Carl," Mrs. Nordgren replied sweetly.

All throughout the city and the world, grownups and adolescent children started to behave normally again as the Yordilian pathogen lost its potency. Those who worked and served at military bases were alarmed at the destruction the invaders had wrought.

At Heathrow, Beat and Roland sat next to each other, their fingers intertwining. "I'm so happy, now that I've met a boy who has the same problem," said Beat wistfully. "Now I wish I could move back to London and see you more often."

"I wish the same thing, I do," said Roland. "Though there's not much we can do together, seein' my mum won't let me date girls until I'm sixteen."

"A bloody shame, that," Beat remarked.

They watched Buster walk in their direction from the far reaches of the corridor, bearing some plastic-coated items. "Hey, guys," he hailed them. "I found a vending machine that hadn't been broken into. Anybody for a midnight snack?"

"No thanks, Buster," said Beat. "Roland and I have agreed to starve to death in each other's arms."

"Have not, you git!" said Roland playfully.

As he was picking out one of the treats for himself, Buster suddenly dropped them all. What he saw in the distant darkness exceeded the limits of his imagination—a vast circle of brilliant lights spinning concentrically inside another circle, like a wheel within a wheel. It descended gradually until it was even with the hills, and appeared to be nearly the same size as the hills.

"What, Buster?" said Beat. "What do you see?"

"Buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh…" stammered the rabbit boy.

General Thaloma was witnessing the same monstrous object, but from a vantage point directly below it. "Damn," she grumbled. "An Alliance mother ship. This can't be good."

A powerful female voice emanated from the ship, so loud that even Buster, Beat, and Roland could understand it clearly. "Attention, Yordilian invaders," it intoned. "You have ten minutes to withdraw from Earth and return to your homeworld. After that we will use deadly force against you. There will be no negotiations."

The general bowed her head and sighed plaintively. Her subordinates turned as one to face her, eager for a command. "You heard the lady," she said with resignation. "Withdraw. That's an order."

The children at Heathrow Airport let loose with unrestrained expressions of joy. "We're saved!" cried Beat. "The cavalry has come to the rescue!"

"Hooray!" shouted Buster. "We're being invaded by aliens with bigger, _cooler_ ships!"

To their surprise and elation, Harry Mills came rushing down the hallway. "Oh, God," said the rabbit man, panting. "I'm so glad you kids are okay. I don't know what possessed me to abandon you."

"Oh, happy day!" said Beat, clapping her hands. "Harry isn't nutters anymore!"

"Hi, Dad," said Buster, giving the man a quick hug. "Roland, this is my stepdad, Harry."

The aardvark boy greeted him with a polite handshake. "Roland Keyes," he introduced himself.

"He's my new boyfriend," Beat told Harry. "We're going to have a long-distance relationship."

"Oh, good," said the man. "Those always work out nicely."

----

To be continued


	36. Return to Normalcy

"This is Wolf Blitzen, reporting for CNN," said the shaggy-faced TV reporter. "We're back on the air after an unexpected hiatus. And what a hiatus it's been! An attack by space aliens, the destruction of hundreds of military installations, and an offer of reconstruction assistance from an interplanetary Alliance. You can't wait to see it all, and we can't wait to show you—but first, a word from our many sponsors." 

Alan, his father, and their new Shih Tzu were seated together on the couch, watching the news reports of the astonishing events that had taken place. Behind them, Mrs. Powers was bracing up Tegan as she struggled to take steps with her weakened legs.

"I'm as glad as anyone that we're free of the Yordilians," Alan remarked. "But what if the Alliance decides to take over and try to straighten us out? They may be just as bad."

"This isn't the time to be worrying," said his mother. "We've got Tegan back, and a poor, crippled dog to love. We should be grateful."

"By the way," said Mr. Powers, "is it a good idea for the dog to be on the couch?"

_You have no memory of asking that question_, thought the Professor.

"That's the fourth time you've asked, dear," said Mrs. Powers.

As Tegan managed her third trembling step without falling down, she heard the calm voice of the Professor in her head: _I think I can help you get your mental powers back._

The TARDIS phased into view on a nearby corner, and the doors opened to allow the Doctor, Sue Ellen, and Prunella a view of the familiar neighborhood. "It's been a pleasure traveling with you, girls," said the friendly Time Lord. "So much so, that I'm afraid traveling with girls may become a habit."

"Wait until I tell all my friends that I saved Earth," Sue Ellen boasted.

"Big deal," said Prunella. "I've saved Earth twice now—once from Pickles, and another time from Dolly. And I'm still waiting for my medals."

"Sue Ellen was very brave, and very clever," said the Doctor. "Stealing the vaccine instead of the disease itself was a stroke of genius. There was much less security to deal with that way."

"Will we ever see you again?" the cat girl asked earnestly.

"Only time will tell," replied the Doctor. Without another word he disappeared into his blue booth, which faded away with a chorus of squeaky noises.

----

Central London was a shambles, many of its historic buildings crushed beyond repair. Of the modern towers, none was harder hit than the mysterious, unmarked, windowless tower that housed the Torchwood Institute. Every floor above ground had been demolished, adding to the tangled mass of girders, concrete, and more than a few bodies. Emergency workers and heavy machines had dug through the rubble almost to the bunker entrance, and could hear the faint voices of trapped Torchwood employees. Harry, Beat, and Buster stood behind the police line, holding their breaths and wishing anxiously for Bitzi and Petula to be well.

Finally, several people in radiation suits were seen ascending the ladder. The first, upon reaching sunlight, pulled off her helmet to reveal the blond curls of Desirée. The second struggled a bit with her helmet, managed to unsnap it, and unveiled a familiar pair of horn-rimmed glasses and long ears.

"It's Mom!" cried Buster with joy.

"It's Bitzi!" Beat shouted in turn. An emergency worker came up after her, cradling Petula in his arm.

"Hello, dear," said Harry sheepishly as his wife approached him with a scowl.

"Don't hello _me_, Harry Mills," she said petulantly. "I want a divorce."

----

With the return of normalcy to Earth came the return of a familiar scourge, homework. Francine, lounging on her bed, had nearly finished a critical analysis of _The Berenstain Bears in Too Much Caffeine_ when Jenna surprised her, rushing into the bedroom with eyes like bulbs. "Francine! Francine!" she exclaimed. "You won't _believe_ who just appeared in the middle of the street!"

"Oh, let's see," said Francine, chewing thoughtfully on her pencil. "Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin and his army of the undead?"

"No," said Jenna excitedly. "Follow me."

The cat girl had always been a faster runner than Francine, and proved it yet again. Just as Francine feared she would lose sight of her guide, she saw them—the entire Crosswire family, wearing bizarre clothes and bickering on the sidewalk.

She pushed herself to run faster. "Muffy!" she cried out. "_Muffy!_"

"I can't believe you got us all deported!" Muffy snapped at her anxious-looking father. The girl still wore the optical fiber dress she had acquired in Elci Kahaf, and the real-time reflection of her face on its front was extremely indignant.

"Look, Muffin," said the car dealer, "it wasn't because of anything I did. The Orelob government knew all along that we weren't what we claimed to be, but it didn't act until the Yordil conspiracy was uncovered, and there was no more reason to extend our Provision Theta status."

"Blah blah blah," said Muffy peevishly. "This is why you sell cars instead of fixing them, Dad—because you can't fix _anything._"

"Muffy?" said Francine, trying to distract her friend from the argument.

"Oh, hi, Francine," said Muffy, glancing at her briefly. Turning to her mother, who held baby Tyson over her shoulder, she continued, "Mom, I've had it with small-town life. I want to live in a big metropolis, even if it's one on Earth. New York, maybe? Paris?"

"Muffy!" said Francine with more insistency.

"Not now, Francine," said Muffy sharply. "Big cities are _full_ of car dealerships," she said to her father. "Just move in, put up a sign, and you're in business. What are you waiting for?"

Francine turned to Jenna and shrugged. "It's like I said—there's no reason to like her except for her money."

"Maybe you're right," Jenna acknowledged. Shaking their heads, the two girls wandered away and left the Crosswires to sort out their disagreements.

----

THE END

Will there be an Arthur Goes Fifth VIII? Only time will tell…


End file.
